Rings
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: This tale of Middle Earth, it too has to do with Rings. Some you wear. Some lie in the heart of every wood. Some you travel in, there and back again. Some are made of the people in your life, how they are tied to each other & how they are tied to you. This is the tale of 2 Rings of Power, a Green Wizard, a 10th walker, and the love beyond death that forged an unbreakable Ring.
1. Wanderer

**RINGS**

**Chapter One: Wanderer**

**The Road to Bree, Middle Earth. The War of the Rings Approaches**

And this tale of Middle Earth, it too has to do with Rings.

Some are the kind you wear on your finger.

Some are the kind that lie in the heart of every wood.

Some are the kind you travel in, on the path of your life, for many years, going here and there and back again.

And some are made of the people in that life, how they are tied to each other, and how they are tied to you.

First you must know what a Faery Ring is, because you will meet them in this tale more than once.

I do know, and I know of their perils, and I still fell asleep in one.

A Faery ring is the nicest, greenest, softest, best-smelling spot in just the right percentage of sun and shade that you find under just the right tree on a nice, sunny day, to just lie down in and smell the flowers, without there being any bees or mosquitoes around.

The Faeries make them that way, or purpose, because they love a good joke, and the joke is on you.

Because when you fall asleep in a Faery ring, you could wake up anywhere, at any time, in any place.

And now that I have returned to the here and now, and I woke up in Middle Earth, Ranagel the Green, otherwise known as Randisbereth Took, a Hobbit, but also known as a dwarf named Thrima, daughter of Gimli, I must ask myself why.

Why would I sleep in a Faery Ring?

Perhaps I was seeking illumination.

And what kind of a fool lies down in a Faery Ring, to find illlumination?

A fool of a Took, that's who.

For I am not on my way to misfortune, but on the way to Bree, where I will stop for a night or two before continuing on to the Shire, to meet Peregrine Took, my second Cousin, at the Green Dragon.

I am going home.

Largely for the same reason most do, after many years of wandering.

I do not know what else to do, and I have no other place to go to find out.

But before I tell you of that, I must ask you a Riddle, and then tell you a tale to answer it.

Several tales, actually.

I have a riddle for you.

I am nearly five feet tall, I have dark curly hair that some will tell you is brown, others burgundy, and some might even say black.

It is very curly.

My eyes are hazel green.

And when I say that, I mean that if you look very close, you will see that one is more green than brown and the other more brown than green, but they call that hazel, don't they?

I'm stocky and strong, (but curvy, thank you) and, unfortunately, being dark-haired and olive skinned, I could probably grow a decent peach fuzz moustache if I wanted to.

And I only wear boots when I am travelling.

When I am not, I wear no shoes at all.

And I have pointy ears.

So, am I a woman, and Elf, a Hobbit or a Dwarf?

The answer is complicated, but it will explain the name my mother gave me.

Randisbereth is Sindarin for Queen of Wanderers.

I have earned that name, worked for it and toward it, all the days of my life.

Wandering is in my blood, for both my parents were wanderers, and I do not know, they may wander still.

My father, Dagobert Took, son of Clovis Took, who was the brother of Beladonna Took, well he was a Took to end all Tooks.

Dagobert the Brave stood four feet and five inches tall, he was as tall as the Old Took, his direct descendent.

A quiet life in the Shire was not what he was looking for, and he spent most of his life from the time he was in his tweens, as an explored, a soldier, an adventurer.

In his travels he met an Wood Elf from the Misty Mountains, Guldis the Seer.

She was able to see the darkness slowly invading Middle Earth, that which Gandalf had sensed and which my father firmly believed in, especially after hearing from his cousin Bilbo Baggins about the things he saw and heard on his journey.

There were not many in Middle Earth who wanted to hear that kind of talk, though.

My mother's uncle and guardian, King Thranduil was one not among the forward thinking few, and he banished Guldis from his court because he wanted to hear no more of it.

She lived for a long time on her own, in the forest of Mirkwood, seeing none of her own people but her cousin Legolas, who did not doubt her visions, and the occasional traveler.

She was already known as a seer of great renown, and even though Thranduil banished her, that did not stop travelers of all kinds from braving Mirkwood for the chance to consult with her.

My mother's visions were very often cryptic, but very seldom wrong.

She, however, had very clear news for the adventurer Dagobert Took and his comrade, Gimli, son of Gloin, who had it in their heads to return to Mirkwood and seek an audience with King Thranduil, about grievances their families still had against him that needed to be addressed.

Something about barrels, treasure and false imprisonment, I would imagine.

I'm sure she didn't need magic to explain to the two travelers that they would be barking up the wrong Elf, and might find themselves imprisoned.

Or worse, sealed up in some barrels.

My mother never explained how she and my father came to fall in love.

And I never cared about things like that, even when I was little, so I never asked.

You might see how a Hobbit could fall in love with an Elf, but not how an Elf could fall in love with a Hobbit.

My mother was much the way you might imagine an Elvin Cassandra would be.

She was very blonde, very beautiful, and very stoic.

But she wasn't all gauzy dresses and cryptic prophecies.

My mother lived alone in Mirkwood forest for some 500 years.

Even though she had in her the magic of the Wood and the Wild, that is no small fear.

There was iron in her, and spirit and fire, and I think that attracted my father as much as her beauty.

And, inasmuch as you think of Hobbits as fat, round little creatures who have eaten far too much bacon, recall that my father was a Took, thank you.

Despite his being, well, short, he was tall for a hobbit, and he was both handsome and dashing, with a bold laugh and an Elvish longbow, and a mad gleam of merry mischief in his eyes.

Like a pint-sized Robin Hood.

He was as light in his heart and his temperament as my mother was stoic and serious; everything was an adventure to Dagobert Took.

Perhaps he was the only man in 500 years to offer to give her something, rather than just take something from her.

At any rate, fall in love they did, Dagobert and Guldis, and they were married.

Dagobert didn't think his family in the Shire, not even the Tooks would be happy to welcome an Elf woman into their midst, so he accepted Gimli's offer to come and live under the Lonely Mountain, with the Dwarves.

You might think this was an odd thing, but the Elf that the Dwarves of Erabor considered their staunchest enemy was King Thranduil, and my mother had no love lost for the only father she had ever known, who had driven her into the deepest, darkest part of one of Middle Earth's deepest, darkest forests, to die.

I suppose the general idea was that any enemy of King Thanduil's was a friend of theirs.

My father and my mother both had wandering souls, though.

My father's out of a love for adventure and my mother's out of restless rootlesness, and so it was that when I was too small to travel that I spent most of my time in the house of Gimli, who was a blood-brother to my father, and godfather to me.

I was raised, cheek by jowl, with a most excellent Dwarf, my age-mate, a very fine fellow by the name of Thror, son of Dis, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield.

Also known as Thror the Younger, Thror the Bear, The Mighty Thror, Thror the Blacksmith, and Prince Thror of Erabor, Heir to the Kingdom Under the Lonely Mountain.

But I'll tell you more about him, later.

Anyway, it began to bother Dagobert Took, that his daughter wore a dwarf hood, chirped "At your service" to strangers, and so he decided, when I was five years old that I would take my first journey, and we would return to the Shire.

In his absence, he had inherited the modest Hobbit-hole of Clovis Took.

His Took relatives were more impressed than appalled he had taken an Elf to wife, and of course we were always made welcome by cousin Bilbo Baggins.

But, my father's furry feet itched him to go a wandering, again, by the time only three more winters had passed.

My mother, however, had come to love the Shire.

She liked the green, rolling hills, and the kind, quiet forest, and the kind, noisy Hobbits, and our cosy, warm, happy Hobbit home, even if she did have to duck all the time.

She was very happy there, as happy as I had ever known her to be, and she wanted to stay, so she did.

We waited a year for Dagobert to return, and then, when he didn't, we gave him another six months.

Then my mother became stoic and sad, again.

She packed me, and our things up and we travelled over the Misty Mountains yet again.

In a leaky, creaky old wagon, with a huge cart horse she'd bought in Bree pulling us along.

Dagobert had not returned to our home in the kingdom of Erebor.

My mother gave me her ring, and left me once again in the house of Gimli, to find him.

I stood holding Gimli's hand, watching that leaky, creaky old wagon pass from my sight, and the last time I saw my mother she had tears in her eyes.

I was only ten, but still I would not cry.

Not until Gimli picked me up, and I put my head on his shoulder and tangled my fists in his beard.

And even then I cried so no one could see me.

And Gimli, son of Gloin has been my mother and my father from that day to this, because neither Guldis or Dagobert were ever heard from again.

Gimli adopted me, and raised me as if I was his own child.

I must have seemed to grow up fast, to him, because elves mature, early, even though they may be considered children for 50 years, depending on how soon they grow up, and Hobbits, though they are not considered of age until they are 33, are all grown up at the same time that men are.

Dwarves are considered young and stupid until they are about 50, but they mature at about the same rate as Hobbits' or men do.

They are a very egalitarian society, in that women are not treated in any way differently from men. They dress the same, they have the same beards, and all dwarves, from the wealthiest princeling to the poorest miner, are expected to learn a trade, work hard, understand the value of hard work and good money, and pull their own weight.

Without much complaining.

I showed an interest in words, and as all dwarves are expected to be their own man, I helped the Master Librarian keep the Library.

But I enjoyed writing words too, not just reading, and I was of a bit of a musical bent, and became well known for my story telling and songs.

Unfortunately, my nickname, Thrima, didn't come from my use of a pen and a lute, it came from the use of my right fist and my left.

I didn't get to be close to five feet tall until I was much older, close to thirty, so I was always small for a dwarf, and as I wasn't actually a dwarf, but a half-Elvish Hobbit, there was always a lot of bullying going on.

But, I am also a Took to end all Tooks, and a took will not be bullied.

And Gimli was quite proud of me that I would not let myself be pushed around; he gave me some tips of how to fight.

When he was called by my schoolmaster, or the fathers of bullies to answer for the thrashings I gave their sons, he would bang his fist and bluster that the lads were cowards to pock on a poor little girl with no mother or father, and that they got what they deserved for being bullies and cowards.

I showed myself to have quite a temper, some even called me Thrima the Terrible.

Even before my parents passed, Gimli and Dagobert put an axe in one of my hands and a sword in the other before I could lift them, and made of me a disciplined fighter.

I think it was too keep me from doing myself, and the rest of Middle Earth, too much of a mischief.

Of course, never let it be said I wasn't my mother's daughter, either.

I was smart enough, in my early life, to keep my visions too myself, and never to put too much stock in them, but the power of the Wood and the Wild was very much with me.

I always felt at home in the Wood, and I never got lost in a forest, no matter how thick or tangled.

I had a way with all green and living things, and as for animals, I never feared or disliked any of them, and none of them ever feared or disliked me.

Except for certain varieties of bloodsucking and stinging insects.

But that's all of that we'll have, for now.

For ten years then, my wanderings were confined to the Shire and the Lonely Mountain.

I stayed with Gimli through most of the year, but in the late spring, when Balin would go to the Shire, for his summer visit with Bilbo Baggins, I went along.

Thror too, some of those years.

We became fairly close to inseparable, in my youth.

I said I would talk to you about Thror, later, though, and I will.

Anyway, in the Shire, sometimes it was my Took cousins I stayed with, other times the Brandybucks, and sometimes I even got to stay at Bag End.

But I was Wanderer by name and wanderer by nature, so I managed to squeeze a little adventure even into these days of my youth.

Quite a lot, actually.

But I had a most excellent companion in my adventuring and exploring, and no better Dwarf for the job than was my very best friend and most-trusted comrade, my fellow maker of merry mischief, that aforementioned Thror, the unexpected child in old age of Dis and..

Well, I can't tell you who Thor's father was, it's a family secret, as Dis was a widow at the time of Thror's birth.

But, Thror's father was a most excellent Dwarf, and a most excellent father, and I'll give you a hint.

As a young man, he wore a mohawk.

Anyway, Thror favored his Great-Uncle, in looks and temperament, right from childhood.

He is a brave warrior, a natural leader, a fearless adventurer and a man of great conviction in that everything he does is right.

People also say that Thror is, footloose, curious, willful, rebellious, mischievous and adventurous as if those were his faults, but I consider them strengths.

Like all Dwarves, he is stubborn, proud, and loyal to his comrades and his kin, but with Thror, I'd say he was a bit more so than most.

But Thror is a bit more so than most in everything.

He stands five feet and nearly three inches, a giant for a dwarf, and two grown Men, not Dwarves, could loop their arms under each of his massive arms, and he could lift them off the ground, because his shoulders and his chest are as wide, if not wider than theirs are.

His legs are like the corded stumps of thick oak trees; his strength is the stuff legends are made of.

I have seen him carry an anvil under either arm without breaking into a sweat, and in Bree, once, we won enough money to make it back to Erabor because he wrested a bear and won.

Never mind that story.

And for those of you who think all Dwarrows are funny looking, Thror is anything but; he's a good-looking fellow, unless you expect men to be pretty as women, with rather large blue eyes, a Roman nose, a strong cleft chin and black hair so black that in some kinds of light it could almost be violet blue.

Thror carries anvils under his arms because his occupation, other than the common Dwarf occupation of killing orcs, is metalwork, and his metalwork is so good that Men, Elves, and Dwarves alike value his work with swords and mail and armor; especially his work in mithril.

To meet him, you might think he was fearsome, with his black beard in two long braids and part of his long black hair in braids and another bit of it he can't tame sticking out in all direction from his head like a mane, well, that and the tattoos around his eyes, but if you are not an orc or his enemy, Thror is not fearsome at all.

In fact, he can be quite a jolly fellow, and he usually is.

Even when we were children, Thror was the biggest, but I was the fiercest.

He and he and I were the youngest, and I was the only girl in the bunch, and dwarves being dwarves, we were right at the bottom of the pecking order, so it was a fight every day just to be able to hold our heads up, and not look like a couple of spineless jellyfish.

I was the only girl in the bunch, and the last thing I would abide was to fall behind the boys.

Because we were at the very bottom, and the types to want to be, nit at the very top but to be bloody well left alone tour own devices, we had to be the fiercest, or so we decided.

In every fight I had to fight, he was there, and in every fight Thror had to fight, I was there.

Eventually, the rest of the young ones decided that we were fierce, and rather queer and resolved to leave us alone, which is what we wanted, because we had to have as much time as we could to plan our next adventure.

The next adventure was always to make it further from the Lonely Mountain without being recaptured than we had on our last adventure.

We grew up hearing stories about our famous forebears, in my case, Bilbo Baggins, and in Thror's, Thorin and Company, and the adventures they had, in the Misty Mountains, and in the very halls where we lived.

Dwarves are not reckoned to be adults until they are somewhere around 50, and Hobbits until we are 33, but that does not mean that we do not think we are just as adult as the children of men do, when we are 14 or 15.

Thror barely had peach fuzz on his chin and upper lip, and I must have only been four and a half feet tall when we planned and executed out most grandest adventure of all.

The one which would show everyone that we were not children, anymore.

Of course we were little more than children, 15 years old, the first time we borrowed axes and ponies and supplies and took off in the night.

Our search in the lands around Erebor we knew for marauding orcs were fruitless, so we decided, instead, that we would ride to Laketown in barrels.

Well, yes, it did seem like a good idea at the time, thank you.

The part of the story we never understood, thought it was told to us many a time by our sources like Oin and Gloin and Dwalin and Balin and Bilbo was that it is not so easy to get past King Thrandiul's eyes.

And the barrels were entirely uncomfortable.

We did not get a bruising ride to Laketown, rather, we were rather prematurely pulled from our barrels in front of King Thranduil.

Who looked upon us which such shock on his usually serene Elvin features that he must have clearly seen his sometime friend and sometime enemy, Thorin Oakenshield in Thror.

And his niece, his ward, Guldis the Seer, in me.

Of course, the Elvenking wanted to know just what we were up to, in his Woodland Realm.

And, of course, Thror looked to me, the great-niece of Burglar Bilbo Baggins, to come up with a damn good lie.

But he did give me a damn good start.

"I only wanted to escort Randisbereth, daughter of Guldis the Seer, to your kingdom, to meet her kin. She would have gone on her own, without me. And i could npot allow that."

King Thranduil gave him a withering look.

"The child of Guldis the Seer, the Prophetess of the Wood and the Wild, who lived for centuries, alone, in Mirkwood, and prospered, she would have got lost in the woods?"

"Tis nae the facts, sir, but the principles of the thing." Thror rejoined, solemnly.

Sometimes, though, even the best would-be burglars know when the truth is the best medicine.

"We meant your realm no harm, Milord. Thror and I are only in search of an adventure, and when we found no orcs to slaughter in Mirkwood, we decided, instead, we would ride down the river in barrels, to Laketown, like our forefathers, and find our adventure, there."

The king laughed, and not entirely in sarcasm.

In fact, I think he had been wanting to laugh for quite some time.

"Randisbereth Took, you are as much Dagobert's daughter as my ward's. Perhaps much more. And you. Thror, there is much of your late brothers, Fili and Kili in you, as there is of Thorin Oakenshield. Now listen to me. You are both little more than children, and should not be abroad in my kingdom, alone. And certainly nothing awaits you in Laketown, but trouble that your kin would have to shell out much Dwarf gold to get you out of. Come back to my court in 15 years or so, when you are closer to grown, and then I will receive you as a Prince and a Princess, not as a couple of rowdy children. Legolas, you will escort these babes in my woods back to Erabor. Thror, son of Dis, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, you are dismissed. Go with him, my son."

I turned to go with them, but King Thranduil beckoned me to come closer to him.

I did.

"My niece's ring. I see her face in yours. She had the same eyes, and though your hair is thicker and curlier, it is the same shade. I cannot ask the forgiveness of a child, because you are not old enough to understand why I sent your mother away. But know this. I banished Guldis because I had to. Not because I wanted to. And I have regretted it, from that day, to this. I have never stopped looking for your mother, or that fool of a Took she married. And I have never lost hope that they will be found. Return, Randisbereth, daughter of Guldis, great-niece of King Thranduil, when you are older and you understand who your mother might have been and what this ring means. And then we will have much to say to each other."

I had always heard that elves were beautiful but cold, but this kinsman of mine did not seem cold as he embraced me, tightly, and pressed a basket with a large package wrapped in colored cloths into my hands.

"Never forget that you are of the Silvani, despite what your Dwarf-kin would have you do. And that not only all the woods and wilds in all the world, but all the halls of all the Elves are your home. May the Gods of the Valar and the Aesir bless and keep you, until the day we meet again."

Legolas Greenwood conducted us home, and Gimli was indeed waiting for us, and his father, Gloin, and Thror's father, at the gates of Erabor.

You could see them trying to hide their pride, and feign anger.

"Escorted home by the son of the Elvenking! In through the gates, you little monkeys! Of course, Legolas Greenwood, we will pay you in gold for all your trouble." Gloin told the King's son.

"They caused no trouble in Mirkwood. And were no trouble to me on our way here. I had long wanted to meet my sister's child. Do not be afraid to come and find me again, Rana. Or to search in Mirkwood for your mother's house. Or to bring your comrade for company."

I was to take Legolas greenwood up on that offer, but that is another story.

Back to the one at hand.

If do not know what else he had to say, because Brunhilda, my grandmother, and Thror's mother, Dis had come to fetch us.

Back to our homes, and off to our punishments.

And then?

My father and I had a very uncomfortable conversation.

A few days after I returned, my father took me aside, and we went for a long walk, in which he hemmed and hawed about a lot of things, and then finally came to his point.

"Had you any more firsts, other than your first fortnight on your own, out of Thror the Younger, these two weeks you've been away on your adventure, my girl?"

"No, Father. After all, Thror's beard has not yet grown in."

"Not below his lip, it hasn't! But below his belt, I'll bet it has! At any rate the lack of a beard's not likely to stop a boy his age. Especially not the brother of Fili and the nephew of Thorin Oakenshield. In almost 200 years of wandering, the King Under the Mountain never paid a landlady in money. And there might be landladies of Elvish blood still waiting on him to return. And Fili? Well he was only ten years older than me and I know him to have been a chip off the old block. The Heirs of Durin have hot blood, my girl, by Mahal's hammer, they do! No you listen to your Da. Don't be goin' off somewheres with Thror and lettin' him get his hands, or any other parts of his body, under your clothes. Don't ask me any more about it. Just do what I tell you."

"Yes, Da."

It was hard for me, to lie to my father.

I had never done it before.

Lied to him, I mean.

The other, though, Thror and I most certainly had done, and I would rather have lied to Gimli than stopped lying with Thror.

Because Thror's beard had grown in, and so had mine, if you follow me.

The first time Gimli had spoken of had occurred the summer before, on the banks of the Brandywine River, during a lovely night, under a full moon in July.

But, back now to the Lonely Mountain.

Though Thror and I were punished, it was said that Thror already possessed the seeds of Thorin's greatness and that Gimli was wise to adopt Dagobert's child as his own, for no matter what blood was in her veins, she was as brave, as crafty, and as stubborn as any Dwarf who drew breath.

I was convinced I was grown, and ready to travel the world on my own, but Gimli knew better and he kept me home the best he could a few years longer.

Likewise in the summer did my Hobbit kinsmen keep one eye on me, but I still managed, sometimes, to escape, dragging along my younger cousin Merry , with little Pippin straggling behind us, but rarely did we get beyond the Brandywine River, despite my best schemes, without some grown Hobbit rounding us up and taking us home.

On my own, I once made it all the way to Bree, and swaggering into the Prancing Pony, all of seventeen, ordered up a mug of ale that proved far stronger than the small beer and table wine I had been allowed to drink, before.

Boldly, and with liquid courage, I made an embarrassingly indecent proposal to a Ranger called Strider, which he has never let me live down, all unknowing that he was old enough to be my grandfather.

The only place he took me was home, and promptly.

And since it seems to be coming up, so often, if I am going to tell you the tales of my life, we'll have to stop, and have a word about sex.

Oho, now you're listening!

Yes, I'll be talking about violence, too, eventually.

But first, I want to dispel one of Middle Earth's meanest myths.

Dwarf men are neither cruel to their women, nor are they cheap with them, or terrible lovers.

They can't afford to be, because there are three or four men for every woman, among the Dwarves. A man who is rich, smart, or lucky enough to have a woman, or a wife, would not be stupid enough to be a bad husband, a bad companion, a bad provider or a bad lover, because he knows that there are three or four other fellows who are richer, smarter and luckier who would gladly show the lady that they were the better Dwarf.

Myself, I've had a Dwarf man for one of my men since he was but a boy and I was but a girl, and I have nothing to complain about.

It may not be love between Thror and I, but he has always been my friend and comrade, he has never lied to me, I have never got up from lying down with him without a smile on my face, and he has never given me grief, or hurt me.

That is something I cannot say, about the other two.

The other two men in my life, I mean.

Unless I want to go on about shagging and sneaking out and occasioanlly drinking too much dark Gondorian ale, however, there's not much more to say for the remainder of the days of my youth, until I was 20 or 21.

That is not unless you'd be fascinated by my telling you about all the ways and means Thror and I had to resort to not to be discovered by the prying eyes of adults, or how many orcs I killed in my first foray into war at 16, or how many times Pippin and I and Merry got chased halfway into the Old Forest by Framer Maggot for stealing vegetables.

I could tell you some more of Bilbo's stories, because the older I was, the more of them I got to hear, but I think you know all of them, already.

Naturally, I thought about what I would do with my life, but just like most silly Hobbits in their tweens, it was all a great fat load of unrealistic, grandiose silliness.

Thror, of course, was going to be King Under the Mountain, and after all I was practically a Wizard.

Of course, when he was King, I was to be his Wizard, but he never mentioned the more obvious W's of wedding or wife, and nor did I, because the same was as far from my mind as it was from his.

Thror was to have many lady dwarves vying for his affections, but most of them had an eye on marriage in thirty years or so, and I only had an eye on when I could live up to my name, and go wandering.

But, by the time I was 20, it was plain to Gimli and Gloin, and the Dwarrows I had grown up with that a young Took with magic in her blood, whose mother had named her Wanderer and whose nickname was Fighter was not going to be content with just books.

I was 21 during the visit of Gandalf the Grey when my guardians suggested to him that as I would approach my maturity as a Hobbit in a little more than a decade that it was customary for me, as a Dwarf, of sorts, to be Apprenticed and learn a Trade.

They thought I would do well in the trade of Wandering Wizard.

Gandalf tried to discourage Gimli and Gloin, but dwarves are stubborn and they can't be discouraged of anything once it's in their heads.

Or so Gandalf told me at the time.

But, whether he had come to find me, or my father and grandfather had talked him into it, when Gandalf left the Lonely Mountain, off I went with him.

Typical of a Dwarf father, Gimli didn't ask my opinion in the matter, and barged into my bedroom, with Gandalf at his side, to tell me to pack myself up, I would be leaving in a fortnight.

I had just returned from a successful patrol of the outskirts of Mirkwood, in which Thror and I routed the unwelcome advances to our borders of a rogue pack of marauding orcs.

They came looking for trouble and they got it, too; dead and piled in a heap and burnt with their leader's head on one of their own spears.

They would go a-marauding no more.

The feast celebrating Thror's and my triumph lasted into the wee hours, so we both slept late.

My father had not invaded the privacy of by bedroom since I was 12 or 13, so I was not expecting him.

And I am telling you this because Thror was in my bed with me.

I still thank the gods of the Valar and the Aesir that we were only sleeping.

We were frozen like two deer before the bow of a hunter when my father burst in, with Gandalf.

As for Gimli. the expression of shock on his face turned rapidly to one of outrage.

Or perhaps, just rage.

Never before, or since, have I seen fear in the face of the son of Thorin Oakenshield's sister.

Gandalf the Grey looked away from our faces as I pulled the blankets up to my eyes and Thror threw his arm out in front of me, in an instinctive gesture of protection.

I now realize that Gandalf turned his head so we couldn't see him laughing.

My father though it anything but funny.

"Master Gimli. I can explain…"

But whatever Thror wanted to say was cut short by my father's howl of rage.

"Despoiler! Maruader! Where is my axe? Where? Ah, never mind I'll use yours!"

My father packed up Thror's axe and started chasing him around the room with it, smashing it into the walls.

I don't think he was really trying to kill Thror; or else he would have had the axe in his head. But, at the time, we were both convinced, otherwise.

"You wouldn't cut off the head of your future king?" Thror yelled .

"It's not your head I would cut off, lad! Now you mark me, boy, King or no King! By Mahal who made us and Odin who made him, by the forge of Mahal and the hammer of Thor, and by Eru Illuvatar who made both the Aesir and the Valar, I call this a marriage proposal! And I accept! The day that you are of age, the very day, my lad, you'll marry my daughter! Or I'll fix it so your father has a daughter of his own to marry off and not a son! We'll see what your father and your mother think of this!"

"I meant no dishonor to Thrima, Master Gimli! And I will seriously consider your offer of your daughter's hand." Thror replied.

He was hoping that maybe getting all high and mighty would assuage my father's anger, but Gimli continued swearing and chasing him with the axe, until he broke the head off and had to chase Thror with the handle.

Poor Thror was black and blue and bloody by the time he could grab his breeches and make a run past my father, stark bloock naked.

Gimli threw the axe handle after him and slammed my bedroom door.

And then it was my turn.

I would rather have been chased with the axe, than to see my Da so upset.

"Have you no sense, girl? Have you no shame? Did your mother never speak to you of such things? Of course she didn't. She died too soon. But did I not tell you not to let this happen? And did you listen to your father? No! Well, I'll tell you more, and you had better listen, this time! It's a fine thing for you you've got Elf blood, or I'd be up to my ears, by now, in pointy-eared, furry-footed, bearded babies! Babies, girl, that's what comes from lying with a man! You carry them in your belly for much of a year, and then, they come out of the same spot where some young despoiling marauder goes and sticks it in! And after that there's shame to you, and shame to your father, and shame to your children who grow up with their grandfather's name and no father! And they're a worry to him and a burden on him in his old age! And even if you're Elf blood fixes it so you don't create for me a lot of little extra mouths to feed, a woman doesn't go around doin' this sort of thing with every man who's a comrade! It's not like shakin' hands, Thrima, my girl! You ought to wait until you're married, but even if you don't, you pick a man, one man, in one place and you don't go hopping from bed to bed! Well, by the stone bollocks of Mahal himself, and the hairs of Durin's short and curly beard, you've picked him! And you'll marry him! And that'll be an end to it! Do you understand me?"

And I nodded, wide-eyed, because I wanted to seem like that was all news to me, and I hadn't long ago read it in a book, even before I spent some seven years practicing at it.

I had read about a great many more things in books than I had done, and rather than putting great store by my knowledge, for further study and future experience, I decided that because I had some knowledge, then I didn't need any experience, because I already knew everything I needed to know.

Well, I was to spend the next ten years learning about just how wrong I was.


	2. Apprenticeship

**Chapter Two: Apprenticeship**

**(_Author's Note In this chapter, we discover who the second man in our heroine's life is, and in chapter three we meet the third._)**

I do have Magic in me, you know.

More even than I would have thought.

All Elves have some magic, but some elves have more than others.

Mine came from my mother, Guldis the Seer, and according to Gandalf, it was powerful magic, indeed.

Maybe he took his first apprentice in an age because Gandalf saw the advantage of having me as an ally in his fight against Evil, rather than leaving me to my own devices, where, in time, I might have come under the Dark Lord's influence, rather than his.

Or, maybe when he found me in bed, at noon with a blacksmith, an axe in my hand, a black eye, and orc blood under my fingernails, he thought that Thrima the Terrible, Warhammer of the North ought to make something better of herself, just like Gimli had.

Did I forget to tell you about the Warhammer part?

Never mind.

Thus, Gandalf became my Master and I his Acolyte.

We spent the better part of the next decade pursuing a wandering wizard's wandering work, following hints of the spreading darkness, aiding fellow travelers in their quests, meeting with fellow practitioners of our art, and even seeking to discover the fate of my parents, and others who had disappeared in trying to combat the rise of the Dark Lord and his evil.

In eight years time I walked and rode and even flew the whole of Middle Earth with Gandalf, to Minas Tirith and Edoras, and to Erabor and the Shire, and back again.

The very first thing I learned was that I was a silly tweenager, full of piss, wind and excitement, and little else.

After I realized that I knew nothing, then my real education began.

And before you imagine Gandalf and I gliding over the grass with our robes flowing behind us, in a state of ethereal Elvish grace, don't.

For one thing, I don't wear robes.

You wouldn't know me from a Ranger, if you met me, by the clothes I wear.

And for another, the road can be a miserable slog just as much as it can be an adventure.

The road does not rise up to meet you just because you have Magic, and every King, Lord, Chieftain, or plain citizen that you visit isn't always happy to see you.

Gandalf got about as much "Oh no, you again, you great freeloading stormcrow!" as he did "Mighty Mithrandir."

As for me, since I was his apprentice I had no choice in the matter, I had what he was having.

Not that I had it quietly.

Gandalf had a reputation for leaving places where he was not wanted with grace and quiet dignity.

I, on the other hand was known to react with anything from righteous indignation to berserker rage.

He would wait outside, in grace and quiet dignity, until I was finished.

Sometimes, we might even get invited to stay.

But, on the whole, wandering has it's good side and bad, and the bad is often as horrible as the good is great. The rain on your back is no less wet, the snow under your boots no less cold, the wind no less bitter and the blistering heat no less warm when you are a Wizard. Nor is there magic to relieve your aching feet when you've long been walking, or your aching ass when you've long been riding, or your sniffling and sneezing when you've got yourself a terrible cold.

It wasn't all miserable, but there was some misery, and for me, the first year was the hardest.

It's one thing to be called "Wanderer", or to take a couple of journeys every year, and go on the odd orc patrol, or adventure or three, and quite another to be a wanderer, always on the bum and on the tramp, with no regular meals or a roof over your head for days, weeks, sometimes even a month at a time.

The only thing I really learned in that first year was how to be a wandering wizard, and whether I could do it.

Well, it was hard, sometimes, but I never complained.

But, whether we were received in some great court with great fanfare, or huddled in the back of a wagon during a rainstorm, on foot, on horseback, in a run down tavern, a cosy inn, a great keep, or camped out under the stars, there we were, and the next day, we would be busily on our way to somewhere else.

I still had my visits home to the Shire and to Erabor, but for something like between six and eight months of the year, I was on the tramp, with Gandalf .

I came to know the Grey Wizard very well; in his humor and his anger, his general kind, good nature, and his wizardly moods of foreboding and frustration.

I don't think he ever wanted to have an apprentice, or had thought of taking one, and at first I'm not sure if he wasn't just going to take me on an adventure and then return me home, all the wiser.

But as the years passed, I earned his trust and his confidence, and the right to truly be called the Acolyte of the Grey Wanderer.

It wasn't easy, though, for either of us.

I always did have a great love of learning, and skill with Magic, and Gandalf often told me that he was glad to have taken an apprentice, but I think, in those early years, I was just as often a sore trial to him, and made him sorry he'd ever agreed to it.

The worst part of it for Gandalf, I think, was in the first year or two.

I liked our life, the wandering and the adventure, but a Hobbit is still a Hobbit and when I was homesick for the Shire and Buckland or the Lonely Mountain, I wanted to go home and there was little talking me out of it.

Gandalf did his best to see to it that I could spend four or so months out of the year with my kin, but there were times when our work prevented it.

As I grew older I came to understand, but there was no living with me, in that first year or so when I got it into my stubborn dwarf-raised skull that I was going home, and Gandalf said I couldn't.

Of course I didn't think it bothered Gandalf, because what I knew of wizards at the start was less even than most.

I knew they were even older than the Eldest of Elves, and with them being Wizards and all I didn't think that they could be anything like, you know, an ordinary person was.

The worst ruck I ever made led to my learning some things about wizards that I'll bet you've never thought of, yourself.

We were in Rohan, waiting out a week of crushing snowstorms when Gandalf made the mistake of telling me that we might have to winter in Rohan if the weather kept at it, and then finish our business come spring.

And that it might even take well into the summer, so my visit to the Shire would be delayed and cut shorter.

I was not very fond of that prospect at all.

I suppose you know what I did, next.

I waited until Gandalf had gone to sleep, packed, got on my horse, Rhovan, and left on my own.

I had some vague intent to make my way to Balin in Moria, and after a brief respite, onto the Shire and I'd see Gandalf in the fall, as usual.

I hardly made it out of sight of the village when Gandalf came riding up on Shadowfax, a blinding light emanating from his staff.

He called me a fool of a Took, tied a rope around Rhovan's bridle and back to the Inn we went.

While I was eating some hot soup and shivering by the hearth at the Inn, Gandalf went and stabled my horse, elsewhere, and hid my pack from me, too.

Leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back, and the money pouch, knife, and Elvin blade on my baldric.

My pride as a Wood Elf was severely wounded, and, as a Dwarf, I was outraged that my pack and my tools had been taken from me.

But, my cooking implements, my traveling food, my pipe and pipeweed, and my teabags and biscuits had been in my pack.

As a Took, nay, as a Hobbit, this was an indignity I would not suffer.

Now it became a question of wills.

The next night, after Gandalf fell asleep, I borrowed a pillowcase, and stuffed it with rolls and fruit I had bought from the innkeeper, with Gandalf's travelling money, and left on foot.

He had to summon Shadowfax for a second night in a row, and I got to march a mile back, on foot, with both of them glaring at me.

The next night, when I got up to make another escape attempt, neither my clothes, my boots, or my baldric were anywhere in sight.

But such things do not deter a Fool of a Took.

I marched out into the snow stark naked, and I would have walked until I froze to death, had Gandalf not come after me.

On foot.

Waving his staff, angrily.

He wrapped me up in a blanket like it was a piece of cabbage and I was a piece of bacon, and carried me back to the inn and up to the room.

I kicked and screamed and cursed him, all the way.

The Grey Wanderer was good and mad at me when he dropped me onto my bed and then locked up the door by means of magic I didn't know yet.

Meanwhile, I huddled inside the blanket, spitting out insults through my chattering teeth.

Gandalf lit the fire in our hearth and sat me down by it.

He sat beside me and wrapped me and the blanket up with him, in his travelling cloak.

"Fool of a Took! I should have let you freeze! Don't fight me, girl, I'm not launching an attempt on your virtue, such as it isn't, I'm just trying to get you warmed! You're like an icicle."

"I want to go home. You don't understand. I need to go home."

"Oh, I understand, Randisbereth Took! I haven't lived several millennia without understanding what it is that drives a Took in her tweens, who thinks that her hot blood will keep her from freezing, to walk, or crawl if she has to, to the nearest place where her strapping young swain awaits her! The first time I met you, you were in bed with Thorin's nephew. Which tells me that you are very desperate, very inexperienced, or both. And don't snuggle me, Rana! Do you think I'm made of stone? Gods, it's times like these that I wish you were a surly young oaf, and not a pretty young girl!"

And that gave me pause.

"Why should you care of I'm a boy or a girl?"

"I'm not that free, my dear. I do have a preference, you know."

"What, you mean Wizards, that wizards…"

I was trying to think of a nice way to say it, but I really didn't know any.

I thought about saying it in Sindarin, but I don't know any dirty words in Sindarin.

Legolas had promised to teach me some, though.

Gandalf laughed.

"Certainly we do, Rana. I'm not sure who would want to live for thousands of years without it. You'd get very bored after the first millennium or so."

He was trying to be droll and amusing, but I was being very thick.

"You mean, in the usual way, and all? I mean, you, you've got a well, you know an, uh, a sword of your own, there, under your robe?"

"That was a clever choice of words, Rana, but I have heard you swear. Copiously. Just now, in fact."

"Do you?"

"Don't I have a head and two arms and two legs like everyone else? Don't I eat and sleep and make pit stops on the side of the road, like everyone else? Why should I be so different from all the other men of all the other races just because I'm a Wizard?"

I wish I had not then said what I said, but you must remember, I was young, and stupid, and I had about the same romantic sophistication as your average sailor.

"Can I get on it, then? Please don't say no, I'm dyin' for a shag!"

"WHAT?" Gandalf roared.

Then, I thought about how I had been parading around in front of him in my small clothes, and we had slept in the same rooms, and when we camped out, sometimes under the same blankets against the cold, all the while never thinking of him, as well, as a man, like any other man, and how I must have tortured him.

And myself, all the lonely months, counting down the hours until I could get to my "strapping young swain."

I felt terrible about it.

"I'm sorry, Gandalf, but that's the nicest way I know of to say it."

I know.

Such finesse.

"Rana, you had better go back to your own bed and stay there."

Oh, you just wait.

I had not yet begun to show the great polish I had learned, having been the casual bed partner of a roughneck young Dwarf like Thror.

"Why? Are ye past it?"

And did that make him angry!

"Past it? Past it! Certainly I'm not past it! And I do not, as it is said about me, prefer men, if that's the next question you are going to ask me! See here, I'm not any more old and feeble and decrepit than any Elf who's a few millennia old. In better condition, I should say, as I do a lot of walking. But, Rana, you just don't offer yourself to whatever man you happen to be travelling with like a party favor. Didn't anyone ever explain this to you?"

"I've heard all that lot many times. From many people. I've read it all, and I've heard it all. All about love and more love and all that sentimental, boring, slosh. Well I don't know about any of that. I just know that I like a man's company, is all, and I won't go crawling under a stranger's blankets, and that's it."

"And that's the only feeling involved in it for you, girl? Simple animal lust? No deeper emotion, not even love, but something of attachment, fondness, desire? Tenderness? No, I suppose you've had very little tenderness from a lad with Thorin's hot blood in his veins, fumbling around with you in the dark."

"No. Not really." I admitted.

"Rana, don't you ever feel that in order for all people of all races to make such a fuss over it, there ought to be more to it that what you've had to make do with?"

His tone changed and his voice was gentle, and something about the way he spoke, it gave me a strange feeling, in the pit of my belly.

As if something there had caught on fire.

Thror will beat his chest and tell you he was the one to put the spark to the fire in my belly, and he had, but I don't think it began to burn, continuously, until those words Gandalf spoke to me.

"Didn't I ask you not to snuggle me?"

"I canna help it."

"And don't look at me like that, Randisbereth Took!"

But he'd asked for it, he really had, and it was too late for me to quit snuggling him, or stop looking at him like that.

"I have, you know. Sat up at night and thought, well, so this is it? What are all these poems about? I mean, you do it, and you get yours, yunno, and he gets his, an' then you go to sleep. It's nae a fookin' epic, is it? But I mean, you know, if there's somethin' I'm missin' in it, well, you're supposed to be my mentor, Gandalf. Can't you show me what all the fuss is about?" I wheedled.

"Go back to bed, Rana."

"I'm not just offering meself to you like I was a party favor. I don't care if you're a couple of thousand years old. You're not so hard on the eyes, you know. I always have thought so, but, I just didn't think there was any use my bringing up the subject."

"You've brought up the subject, alright. On several occasions." He quipped.

"Don't make me go back to bed, Gandalf. And lie there all night in bleedin' torment. You've given me this funny trembly feeling in me legs, and I'm beginning to feel as though I want to scream, and beat my head on the wall. If I don't…well I don't know a nice way to say it, if I don't get my end off, soon, I'll go and throw meself under the first likely Rohrrim who can take me in a fight, two falls out of three."

"Rana, a woman does not choose her lovers based on their ability to beat them in a fight. You have been cheated, my dear. Love, or lust even, is one of the great pleasures of life. One of life's necessities. Some would say the greatest joy of all existence. It cannot be accomplished very well in a haymow in five minutes with one's trousers still on. Unless you've had a lot of practice."

"Have you?" I asked

"Yes. I have." Gandalf replied.

"Well, I mustn't have had enough. Can you help me practice, then?"

Gandalf laughed for a long time.

"You're not going to let me be an honorable man, are you? You're just going to throw yourself under me, pretty soon, aren't you?"

"Probably." I admitted.

"If only to save you from marriage to Thorin's nephew, Randis. As a matter of fact, I very much want you to help me practice. You're not too hard on the eyes either. In fact, you're a very beautiful, desirable, and naïve girl. Perhaps it's for the best."

"Are we done talking yet?"

"Wait a while, Rana, I'm rationalizing. Go and get in the big bed, down under all the blankets, and a soon as I've talked myself into it, I'll join you."

Well, I have to admit, I didn't hop up and tell Gandalf that Thror had never left me anything less than satisfied, and I got under his blanket on that old chestnut that I needed a man to show me what love really was, or some such thing.

But I didn't lie about wanting that fellow to be him, or about how the emotional side of things had never touched me.

I don't suppose you'd be surprised if I tell you that Gandalf showed me what all the poetry was about.

He was my teacher, and my mentor, and he looked after me, and all that, it made for something more, something deeper in the well of all that business they call love than I had felt for Thror.

I had at least begun to understand how kingdoms could be won and lost and fortunes made and broken over it.

I mean, you try and lie next to a man, through thin and flush, a man who's all things to you in the world, for much of the time, for nearly ten years and not feel something deep and permanent from him.

But it wasn't, you know, that kind of love they write about, and I was glad of that.

The kind of love the poets write about can break your mind, wreck your life and even kill you, and I wanted none of that.

But Gandalf, he was the best teacher I ever had, in more ways than one, and if that sounds dirty, it should, but I don't mean you to think it shameful.

Because I'm not ashamed, and neither was he.

For there are many things in the world that are fine, and hot, but none so fine and hot as a long, tall, blue-eyed Wizard on a cold and frosty night.

I imagine you'll want me to tell you more about it than that, but, right now, the most important thing you need to know is that Gandalf was all things to me, in those years.

Teacher, mentor, lover, protector, companion and friend.

If that doesn't explain what there was between me and the Gray Pilgrim, to you, then I don't know what will.

Gandalf was as good as his word in other respects, too, we were back in the Shire in late summer, even earlier than he had promised.

Even better, once we got all of that sort of thing squared away, and nicely arranged, and I began to live up to my name of Wanderer, having gotten used to the roaming life on the roads, I was really able to concentrate on my studies.

In my third year of my apprenticeship, I began, not only, to be able to see the hand of the Dark Lord, but to see who and what it had touched, and how.

As time passed, that developed into a unique instinct for evil, and for the Dark Lord and his works; I could smell it the way a dog smells blood.

I began to come to know the paths we travelled so well I could have walked them in the dark on the night of a New Moon, and to be able to think of shortcuts and different routes and ways and means to travel.

Most importantly, I may still have used Gandalf's methods and his precepts, but I no longer had to use his magic.

I had learned to control and apply my own Powers.

Which were more considerable than I had given myself credit for.

I even began to believe that maybe there was something in Gandalf's assertion that my mother's ring might be the Ring of Life, and that I was, or at least, I could become, the Taurilbereth.

I will explain to you who and what she may be, later on in this tale.

My point is, I was quickly becoming my own Wizard, and developing my own idea of how to do things, and where we should go next and with whom, and for what.

The oddest thing about my apprenticeship was, as slow as time had gone by when I was a child, it flew past me in those years of my apprenticeship.

Eight mid-summers in the Shire, eight cold Januaries and Februaries under the Lonely Mountain, they followed into each other feverishly fast.

And Bilbo was the only one who didn't change, because I kept getting taller and taller and taller until I was only an inch or three shorter than Thror.

Who kept getting bigger and wider and stronger until he became the strongest fellow, Dwarf, Man, or Elf, in all the land of Eriador.

Such that if it was noticed by anyone but him, Man, Elf or Dwarf, as to how I had grown in my figure in other direction but up, he'd give them a look that would make them turn their eyes away and forget.

Pippin shot up like a weed and so did Merry, with Pippin ending up at the fine Tookish height of four feet and Merry at four feet and one inch.

Sam Gamgee got a barrel chest and grew hair on it, and didn't cousin Frodo start to look like a grown man, especially after Bilbo disappeared after his eleventy-first birthday party.

And I wasn't considered quite so young and stupid anymore.

In the Shire I no longer stayed with family, but at the age of 25, well before my majority, but considered reasonably adult, due to my apprenticeship and all, I was allowed to take over my father's property, Uncle Clovis Hobbit Hole.

I made my own home for myself there.

And Under the Lonely Mountain it was getting to be that it wasn't, you and Thror go and sit over there, and don't bother us, Thrima.

He after all was going to be the King, and I would be his Wizard.

And when Gimli now, not Gloin, led a patrol against the ever-increasing threat of marauding orcs, he never did so without Thror and I coming along.

We took orders from him, and the ones who had made our childhoods miserable, they were a bit older than we were, but they took orders from us.

Time caused a little grey to creep into my father's beard, and Strider's, and my grandfather's beard and hair went white.

I was not yet 33, and considered a woman grown, but I was by no means a child, either.

Gandalf too decided that it was time that my skills were tested, and that, just for a little while, six months or so, I should go my way and he should go his.

I immediately refused.

We both knew it wasn't because I wasn't champing at the bit to have a chance to prove my mettle.

He muttered, darkly, a little, about my being far too attached to him, and his having made a mistake, but he managed to find a way around the problem.

And a way to make me accept my Elvin blood.

All in a way that seemed by chance.

In my life I had proved to be a fine dwarf, a great fighter, an adventurer, a wanderer and an explorer like Dagobert the Brave, a Took to end all Tooks, a wizard's protégé, a Witch of the Wood and the Wild, like my mother, a storyteller and a musician, not to mention a woman who knew her way around a mattress.

But I had never been much of an Elf, and had no desire to be one.

When I was asked what race I was from, I would always reply that I was a Hobbit who had been raised by Dwarves, because although I am a half-blood Wood Elf, right down to my pointy ears, I have never considered myself to be one.

Oh, I'm alright with the wood part.

I've been told many times about dangerous forests and evil woods but I've traveled through all of them, and I know some of the most fearsome like I know my right foot from my left, and I've never known danger or evil from the woods.

Something in my soul leaps up with joy when I walk across the forest floor.

And I'm quite a tauril, that is, a forester, myself.

I could spend ten years living in the wood if I had to you can find everything you need in a forest, from food and shelter, whether or not to build yourself a cabin, to medicine and means of making a living and defending yourself.

Gandalf explained to me that my love of the wood and the wild was part and parcel of my Elvin blood, and I told him what I just told you.

I'm alright with the wood part, it's the Elf bit that gives me trouble.

King Thranduil turned my mother, his ward and niece, out of his kingdom, and all I ever got from him by way of apology or acknowledgement was a cryptic and mysterious explanation, my mother's travelling cloak, and an even more cryptic invitation.

Gandalf had told me what it was that made Thrandiul banish his ward, and I will let him tell you that tale, later, but I still thought it gave him little reason to treat her so shabbily.

Since I had been 15, I had been to my mother's cottage a few times, as Legolas had suggested, and I had met him there or in Mirkwood, many times.

But I knew my kinsman was unlike to most Elves, and with the exception of his society and my mother's travelling cloak, I hadn't got anything else out of the whole race, and I didn't want for anything more, either.

I was raised by Dwarves, who have a long-standing enmity with Elves, and the Dwarves closet to me, Gimli, my father, Gloin, my grandfather, and Thror, my friend and companion had direct and personal grudges against the Elves, for slights that were never apologized for, and wrongs that were never righted.

And I seem to myself anything but Elvin.

I am not tall, not slim, nor am I graceful and ethereally beautiful, and though I was taught by my mother to speak both Sindarin and Quenya, I do so with a thick highland Westron burr.

Like a Dwarf.

There was no way in all the realms of Middle Earth I would ever have willingly embraced my Elvin blood or mingled with others of my kind had Gandalf not tricked me into doing so.

In a way that seemed to have nothing to do with him at all, of course.

I was 28, and in my eighth year of apprenticeship to Gandalf when he pulled his clever trick.

Gandalf and I were travelling from the Shire when we were met by a rather large and impressive party of Elves, with whom my cousin, Legolas rode, and was headed by Lord Elrond, himself.

I knew that Gandalf and Elrond were old friends, so I resolved to be polite, but keep my distance.

But, even as I was about to wheel Rhovan around, and wait a few feet away, Lord Elrond hailed me.

"Hail, Lady Ranagel!"

In Quenya, "Rana" is the feminine form of the word that means means "Wanderer" and "gel" or "gul" is a suffix that means having to do with wizardry or sorcery.

If Elrond was talking to "Wanderer Sorceress", there was no doubt he was talking to me.

Still, I looked around, I really did.

"Rana, Lord Elrond is talking to you." Gandalf told me.

"Me?"I snorted.

Rather indelicately.

"You, Ranagel. I see your choice of male companions has improved." Legolas chided me, grinning.

Gandalf smiled and raised his right hand, but with his left he ever so quietly grabbed Rhovan's reins, to prevent my escape.

"Greetings, Gandalf. I am sorry if we have alarmed you and your Acolyte, but I wanted to observe the highest of formalities for members of one royal house of the Elves to be received by another." Lord Elrond continued.

He piloted his snow white horse, with his snow white self astride it, close enough to me that he took my small, tanned, callused paws in his long, slim, white hands.

All I could think of was that I wished I would have had the opportunity to wash my hands earlier that day.

"Lady Ranagel Took, daughter of Dagobert Took, the Brave, and Lady Guldis of Mirkwoood, niece of King Thranduil of Mirkwood, your cousin Legolas Greenleaf and I welcome you to Rivendell. With my apologies to you, on behalf of all the race of Elves, that you and your mother were treated so shabbily. King Thranduil long has seen the error of his ways, and for ten years past, he has sent emissaries throughout the Realms, looking for your mother. He wishes to make amends with you, and receive you in his court. As he promised you, when you were a child. I wish to offer you my hospitality, at the Last Homely House, that you may come to know more of our race than you have learned about from those who hold us in low esteem. We are your people, as much as the excellent Hobbits from whom your father is descended, and the noble Dwarves who raised you. I know you have no reason to love or trust us, but come to Rivendell and stay for a time. Hopefully you will learn to do both."

"I…well…I…"

"I understand if you decide to leave, and return to the Shire while Gandalf is away. But your father's uncle, Bilbo Baggins will be so very disappointed if you do. And he's quite old, for a Hobbit." Elrond continued.

"You never know how much time Bilbo has left." Gandalf added

That was when I knew that they had planned it, between them, the three of them.

But Bilbo was quite old, and not getting any younger.

And he had been telling me, and my kin, our whole lives about the beauty of Rivendell.

Not to mention the library Lord Elrond must have.

In the end, I relented.

Even I must say, Rivendell was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, in all of Middle Earth.

It was as if I had walked into another world.

Every day for the first month or so that I was there, I was dumbstruck with wonder.

And I did quite a bit of wandering and exploring, both outside in groves and streams and gardens, and inside, in Elrond's halls and rooms and battlements and trellises, and his vast library.

All the knowledge of three ages was stored there, and I was breathless with the expectation of gaining it.

I took to Rivendell, and the Elves, faster than I thought I would.

But, it was strange to me, after we had been together so long, to be without Gandalf, and not in Buckland, or the Shire, or under the Lonely Mountain, but in this ethereally beautiful place, with these people, my people, they said, but who were so utterly foreign to me in every way as if they had been people from the Moon.

I took to the books and the gardens quickly, and I also spent a great deal of time with Bilbo.

I was glad to be in his company and he assured me of what a fine place it was, and what fine people Elrond's were.

It took me longer to take to the Elves.

The first friend I had amongst them was Sindaris, Elrond's librarian.

He was so very much like all of the others I had met who shared my love of books and learning, we few odd ducks who are exhilarated at the very prospect of entering a new library for the first time, that I could not help but like him.

I was just as quickly befriended by Arwen, Elrond's daughter.

She wanted to know who made my clothes for me.

Arwen shared my love of the Wood and the Wild and a good adventure, and all three are difficult to enjoy in a flowing gown, and perhaps even more difficult in ill-fitting men's clothes.

I explained that dwarf women wore the same simple, practical clothes as dwarf men, and that my sturdy and practical tunics, jerkins, and breeches were made for me by my grandmother when I was a child, but that she had taught me the art , starting when I was 15, and that I had since I began my apprenticeship with Gandalf I had been making my clothes, myself.

My boots, however, were made, by my good friend Thror.

Only he could make me a pair of boots that would last me more than a few months of my wandering life, in the same way that he fashioned the leather and mail armor of the Dwarves who would someday call him their King.

Arwen was considerably taller than me, but with a few adjustments of my patterns, she was able to make some of my kind of clothes for herself, from cotton and leather and wool.

Lord Elrond complained, with some mirth, that I had turned his daughter into a Wood Elf.

Elves, I discovered, much like the other races, are all just people.

Some you'll like, some you won't, but they were neither all good nor all bad.

I must say, though, no race who appreciated stories and songs so much could be all bad.

They had never heard stories or music such as mine, and I was glad of a new audience to tell them to.

In Rivendell, through Legolas, I renewed the acquaintance of the chief of the Rangers of the North, Aragorn, also called Strider.

Strider began to ask me along, on some errand or the other with the Rangers, until I became known in the lands of Eriador the country as Ranagel the Green, the Ranger-Wizard of the Wood and the Wild.

When I was travelling with the Rangers, we were often close to the Shire, sometimes not more than a few days ride away.

I went down much in the estimation of the more respectable shirefolk, but among my kin the Tooks and the Brandybucks, I was much celebrated.

When I proved to have knowledge of fireworks as good as Gandalf's, even the most respectable sons of Hobbiton began to brag about me, telling each other that they always knew that she had a bright future, as bright as her father Dagobert's, that Rana Took.

Otherwise known as Ranagel the Green.

I liked the name, but I tried to discourage it's use, as I am not of the Valar.

But I have magic, I wear mostly green and a bit of brown, and I am at home in the greenwood, so the name stuck.

I was understandably upset until I had a message from Gandalf that there were no Green Wizards.

Not only that, it would be far too difficult for me to explain to most how the magic I had from my mother was different from the magic of a wizard, and as I was the Acolyte of one of the Valar, Saruman the White had grudgingly given me permission to use the name.

I hardly noticed that a little over a year had passed by before Gandalf returned to Rivendell, or that in that time, I had become my own Wizard, Ranagel the Green.

Or that I had even begun to carve my own magical path, with the Rangers of the North, the Elves of Rivendell, and my own people in the Shire and Buckland, all in the seemingly endless greenwood of Eriador.

But, if a little rain must fall into all of our lives, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit or man, then it was a terrible storm that was about to break over me.

I would ask that you not judge Gandalf too harshly, because he had no intent to deal me the blow that he did.

We travelled a long way together, and took the better part of the summer to ride from Bree all the way to Minas Tirith, in Gondor.

I hadn't taken the gentle hint from him when he left me on my own, that, at least for now, my time under his blanket was past.

He tried to put me off, gradually, but I didn't take that gentle hint, either.

I just kept thinking that he was tired out from travelling.

We were about a fortnight from our destination, staying at one of the least pleasant inns I had ever seen when he had to spell it out for me.

Gandalf did it as gently as possible.

"It's certainly nothing do with you, as a woman, Rana. You have only become more beautiful as you've grown to womanhood, even more so, that you are discovering your own ways, your own magic, and your own path. But your deep affection for the vainglorious, stupid old man who unlocked the kingdom of Earthly delights for you will only hold you back. Middle Earth is wider than you know, and the time you have spent living on it, let alone travelling it is, in the grand scheme of things, the blink of an eye. My days are coming to an end, and yours are just beginning. You need to go forth into the New Age that is upon us, looking forward, to the future. Not backward, at old Gandalf Stormcrow. There will come a time, before my days are done, when you and I might have a little more time together, but the days we have known, such as they have been, are done and gone. Even though I regret their ending. In short, you are all grown-up now, and you have had enough practice on me, Ranagel the Green."

Gandalf laughed, but his eyes did not laugh with him.

Or smile.

"But, Gandalf, I love you."

We both knew that I didn't, or at least not in the way I was trying to say.

But I wanted to say it to him.

I thought he deserved to hear it.

And I thought it might made a difference.

Well, it didn't.

"Randisbereth Took, of all the times for you to discover love, and all the men for you to pin it to, this is no time! Not to mention I am the wrong one! You made it impossible for me not to gather you under my robes, and now you are making it impossible for me to leave you out from beneath them! You love me because I am like father, teacher, mentor and lover to you, all in one. You do not love me as a woman simply loves a man. You have never loved that way in your life, and I know you must. Just as you must go into the wide world alone, to be your own woman, and your own Wizard. With no kin, and no help and nothing familiar. Just your skill, your wit, and your magic."

I suddenly understood what he was telling me, and panic began to crawl around in my belly like a virus.

"Gandalf, do you mean to say you are going to leave me in Minas Tirith, and abandon me to me fate? This is only the second time I have ever been in Gondor, and the last was nearly ten years ago! I am a stranger here! I have no kin, and no friends! And precious little money! Where will I go? How will I live?"

"When I was a young wizard, and I was one, once, long ago, I cut my teeth serving the Kings of Gondor. I can think of no better place for you to start. I am not abandoning you to your fate, Ranagel the Green. Lord Denethor knows of our coming, and of my intention to leave you in his service. I will come back for you, and you will return to Eriador, so that you might attain your majority at home, among friends. But this is what you must do. And it is what I must do, also. I held onto you for too long, Rana. That was my folly. I will not allow it to affect your fate. No matter how it hurts you. And no matter how truly, and deeply it wounds me."

And so it was that Gandalf left me in the land of Gondor.

For, he said, at least to Denethor, the Enemy grew stronger and marshaled his forces, and even though he, Gandalf, had more of these perilous paths to travel, it was well that I, Ranagel the Green, would attend the White Tower, and keep an eye on Mordor where the shadows lie.

But the shadows did not just lie in Mordor.

As I looked into the distance at the fires of Mount Doom from the White Tower, I felt as though those shadows had crept into all the empty places that Gandalf had left.

Seduced, betrayed and abandoned.

What an old story it is, and how many times I had laughed at those who told it.

But now that it was my story, it wasn't so funny, anymore.

Despair, bitterness, and anger beckoned to me.

I answered their call, and opened my heart and soul to them.

_**Oh no, poor Rana! Seduced, betrayed, abandoned and penniless is a fine way for a master to leave his apprentice. Selflessly thinking that perhaps she will fall head over heels for another of his acolytes, Faramir. But, you and I know that fate might just have other plans...**_


	3. Desire

**Chapter Three: Desire**

**On the Banks of the Brandywine River, Buckland. **

Thror lay on his back, looking up at the moon.

Wondering if Thrima would come.

But she said that she would.

He looked up at the moon.

It was full, and it was Midsummer's Eve, and every Hobbit in the Shire or in Buckland, and their guest, Uz-Balin were at the festival in the Shire.

It would be long into the night before anyone noticed that Thror or Thrima were not present.

Long enough.

Thror scratched the down of fuzz on his chest, absently, and ran his hand over the drooping moustache on his lip, and the scraggly beard that hung from his chin halfway down his neck.

Hardly a man, but here I am, abroad in the night on men's business.

Thror thought he heard a twig snap, in the distance, and he looked over his left shoulder, and saw no one.

But, when he looked over his right, there was Thrima.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Well, what?"

"Well, what am I doin' here in the middle of the night, missin' the Midsummer Festival?"

Thror blushed in the dark.

"I thought you might be able to guess that."

Thrima's already large eyes grew wider, and then she laughed.

"So, it's on your mind, too?"

"Every time I look at you."

"Every time you look at any girl."

"You more than most."

They looked at each other for a long moment.

"What do I do?"

"Durin's hairy arse, Thror, you mean you don't know?"

"I know! I just don't know where to start."

"Neither do I. But you're makin' me fookin' nervous. Belt up and kiss me, that's a good enough start."

"But don't say anything."

"I won't if you won't. We'll not say anything and we won't stop, until we're finished. I can't think of what else to do."

When first Thror kissed Thrima, he was nervous, thinking on if he was doing it right, and he almost stopped to ask her, but then he didn't.

Which was a good thing, because the way she pushed her body against his, it made him stop thinking, and after that, things went much better.

They had got to the part where they got out of their clothes and rolled around on the bank, some, and so far it was just as Thror thought it should be, and a lot better than what you could manage on your own, but now they were at the bit where, well, it was time for him to go ahead and do it.

Thror looked down at Thrima.

"Do you want me to stick it in all at once, or do it slow? Because I don't want to hurt you." He asked.

"Didn't I ask you not to talk to me?"

"Well I don't want to ruin it for you, do I?"

"No. I suppose you don't. I don't care if it hurts. I want you to do it. Like I don't want nothin' else I've ever known in the world."

"That's how I feel, too."

Thror thought he ought to kiss her again, and it was all very nice, but then, somehow after he'd put it where it was meant to go, it slipped out again.

"Fook! Put your legs up higher, Thrima. Around me waist."

"Like that?"

He tried it again.

Thrima tightened her arms and her legs around him, and they both gasped.

"I think you've got it right this time, laddie!"

"It dinna hurt?"

"As far from hurt as you can get. Go on, damn you, and quit fookin' talkin' to me!"

They went on.

And got to the bit at the end, where you got very sweaty and very loud, but all the ways it had ever been told to them paled by comparison with the feeling, itself.

They parted and lay on the bank, together, panting.

Thror reached for Thrima's hand.

"Can we do that again, soon, Thror?"

"If it's anythin' like when I do it meself, probably in about fifteen minutes. Is that too soon?"

"No."

**Edoras, Rohan.**

Gandalf took off his hat, as Rana busied herself, bouncing on the bed.

"…thought we would freeze to death before we ever got here!"

"It's not my fault if winter decided to give fall a miss, this year." Gandalf replied.

Rather more snappishly than he should have.

But he had walked through the Gap of Rohan in snowdrifts up to his thighs, with Rana on his shoulders, dragging their things along behind him on a makeshift sleigh.

That would be enough to make anyone grumpy.

"I didn't say it was! This is a very bouncy bed…"

Gandalf let the Hobbit have her fun, and busied himself, arranging his hat with his staff, and looked them both over.

Then he pulled his robes over his head.

"I stink." He muttered.

The bathwater in the large stone tub that Rana had used was still warm, and she continued to bounce on the bed and sing silly songs and laugh while he bathed.

Indeed, after Gandalf got into bed, Rana continued bouncing and laughing and singing.

He smoked a pipe and tried to ignore her, and then he tried to be cross, but when she wasn't slinging that axe around and acting as if she was a Dwarf and a Dwarf-man at that, and she was busy at being a little Hobbit girl, Gandalf could not be cross with Rana.

He caught her in mid bounce and she fell in a heap on top of him.

"Stop that at once, Rana Took!" he insisted, trying to sound stern.

"What would you rather I was doing?"

But then he laughed, too, and rolled his Acolyte across the bed.

"Since I see I will get no sleep tonight, I might as well make the most of it."

Rana put her arms around him.

"I was hoping you'd be in the mood for it. This is just the bed for a rare good time."

And, of course that was the moment that King Theoden picked to open the unlocked door and walk in.

Because, just like most Men, or even Dwarves or Elves, he imagined either that Gandalf was a wizened old man under his robes, or that he was not any kind of man at all.

"Great Thor!" Theoden exclaimed, blushing to the roots of his hair.

"I am sorry. I will come back, tomorrow." He sputtered and closed the door.

"Did you forget to lock it?" Rana asked Gandalf.

"I wasn't the last one in."

"Sure you were. We've been on the road since we left the Shire." Rana joked

"Does nothing embarrass you, Ranagel?"

"No. I was raised by Dwarves, remember?"

"Well, I am embarassed. And Theoden is mortified. Go back to your bouncing and singing; I will not be gone long." Gandalf told his Acolyte.

He got out of bed and put on his other set of robes, the clean ones, and went out into the hallway.

King Theoden was staring at the door as if it would get up and walk away

"Theoden, if I might explain…"

"Why should you explain, Gandalf? There's nothing to explain, really. But, by the hairs of Odin's beard, Gandalf, I never thought…well , it was stupid of me, but…you ought to tell people, because no one thinks …why did you not lock your door! By all the gods of the Aesir, man, does Thror the Younger know of this? I have seen him tear a man's arms right out of their sockets!"

"Rana keeps no secrets from her young bear of a dwarf swain. Was it important?"

"What?"

"Your reason for coming to my rooms?"

"What? Oh, yes. Your horses have found their way here, too. I have made sure they are in the stables."

"That is good news. Any sign of a wagon?"

"Only the hitch dragging behind the horses."

"That is not so good news. I had a lot of fireworks in that wagon. Well, it cannot be helped. At least we have the horses, and Rana has her pack. Now I know why she never leaves it in the wagon. Well, Good night, Theoden, king. Thank you, again, for giving us refuge. I have not seen a winter like this one in at least a hundred years."

"I could not stand by and let you both freeze to death, could I? Well, good night to you, Gandalf."

Gandalf went back to his room, satisfied with his and Théoden's pretence at not being horribly embarrassed.

He locked the door and took his robes off, again.

"Well, Rana our horses have returned, but the wagon is lost. Which means I have lost my comb. And it was the only comb I had ever owned that did not break in my hair. Thorin Oakenshield made that comb for me, out of mithril and bone, with his own hands. It was all I had left to remind me of my bad-tempered and ill-starred good and noble friend. And I have lost it!"

"What kind of Dwarf or Erebor would I be if I let the artifacts of Thorin Oakenshield fall so carelessly by the wayside? I've got your comb, Gandalf. In my pack. I put all of your important things in my pack after we left the horses and the wagon. They're at the bottom. Wrapped up in that piece of buckskin I was saving to repair the lining of your boots. You can go on and get it out, I trust you."

"Are you sure I'm the wise one, Rana?"

"Yes. Because you're the one thinking about the fate of Middle Earth. I can see where you wouldn't have time to think of what to take away from the wagon. So I thought of it."

Gandalf took about a half of an hour to comb his hair, and Rana switched from singing Hobbit songs to singing Dwarf songs.

It apparently gave her an idea, because she got her journal and her pen from her pack, and started writing.

Gandalf finished combing his hair, and then arranged all his things on the piece of buckskin and took off his robes, once more.

"It's just the right size for me to keep all of these things in. And then I would know where they were, my comb, and my pipe, and my purse and the pouch for my pipeweed and so on, and I wouldn't have to ransack the wagon looking for them."

"Then I'll make that piece of buckskin into a pouch, instead. And I'll turn something else up, while we're here, to patch your boots with." Rana replied, absently.

On his way back to bed, Gandalf caught his reflection in the mirror.

"Who's a wizened old man? I am Olorin of the Istari, one of the Maiar, I do not get old, or wizened! I am in tip- top shape! I daresay I would be no matter what race I was I was of, after three ages worth of fresh air and constant exercise."

"Why don't you parade about in your loincloth in front of your detractors, then, the way you do in front of me, and let them hear about all the exercise you've taken in thousands of years?"

"That would be undignified." Gandalf sniffed.

"And you're the picture of dignity, smoking your pipe in your funny pointed hat and your two tatty sets of robes that get tattier every year, and your hair and beard like the mane of a very old and tatty lion, sticking up and down and out every which way?"

"That is all part of the persona I have assumed."

"Is it? I thought you were Gandalf the Gray. Not Gandalf the Shaggy. Or Gandalf the Tatty."

Gandalf was about to protest, angrily and then he realized she was teasing him.

"If we are choosing our names to suit our ways, then why don't you just change your name to Ranagel the Randy, then?"

"I like that! And you could be Gandalf the Well-Hung. It's undignified, but with a name like that, people would stop assuming that they can walk into your bedroom at night with impunity."

"I haven't the faintest idea why! We are always asked if we want separate rooms, or separate beds, and I always say that it won't be necessary. What more should I have to say? Should I chuckle and smack you on the arse, to make my point? You would think that my response was self-explanatory. Why do half of the men, Elves, and Dwarves in Middle-Earth suspect that I am a eunuch? Not just that I am past it, because I have a long grey beard and grey hair, but that I never had it to begin with?"

"You just don't think of a wizard that way."

Gandalf laughed.

"You did. Even when you were under the opinion that I was past it."

"Don't confuse me with facts, Gandalf."

"That is a terrible expression for a wizard to use!" Gandalf joked.

He folded up the piece of buckskin, with his things inside it, and got back into bed.

"Still, did you see, the expression on Theoden's face? They all get that same comical expression on their faces!"

"What do people think we do, out there on the road, every night, for all these years?"

"Smoke." Gandalf replied.

They laughed and he rolled her across the bed, again.

This time the door stayed shut.

**Minis Tirith, Gondor**

_where art thou going_

_fair love of mine_

_in thy Elvish cloak of shimmering grey_

_where art thou going_

_fair love of mine_

_on such a white and blinding winter day_

_farewell my love_

_on black sail'd ships_

_I must be away, away_

_farewell my love_

_at break of day_

_I go unto the Havens of Grey_

_can I come with thee_

_fair love of mine_

_or shall I be ever bereft of thy light_

_can I come with thee_

_fair love of mine_

_or shall I be cast deep into Stygian night_

_farewell my love_

_on black sail'd ships_

_I must be away, away_

_farewell my love_

_at break of day_

_I go unto the Havens of Grey_

_then one last kiss_

_fair love of mine_

_for from this world we shall both stray_

_then one last kiss_

_o fair love of mine_

_I go to the grave, you to Havens of Grey_

_farewell my love_

_on black sail'd ships_

_I must be away, away_

_farewell my love_

_at break of day_

_I go unto the Havens of Grey_

_ -By Randisbereth Took, also known as Ranagel the Green, written and sung in the court of Denethor II_

Desire can be a strange thing, indeed.

Gandalf may have wanted to impress upon me that I was now Ranagel the Green, now, and that I should trust her judgement.

Well had I trusted her judgement in the court of Denethor, I would not have got too far.

After all, even if I was, in Gandalf's mind, someone Great and Powerful, to the Steward of Gondor I was only a woman, and a rather small one, at that.

Not to mention that Gandalf rarely travels with much money on him, and carries nothing of any material worth.

Had I been Ranagel the Green, an Elf as old as time, in something gauzy, green and regal, with a big staff and a long train and a green crown of olive branches, I might have been able to pull it off.

But I am not three thousand years old, nor am I in excess of six feet tall.

I took a good look at the steward of Gondor, and the expression on his face, and saw myself as I must look in his eyes.

A small woman, stocky and strongly built, with a good body for a good roll, but there were many buxom lasses in Gondor, I'd warrant.

He was most likely looking at my sweat-stained, battered leather jerkin, and my threadbare, sleeveless summer tunic, and the worn kilt that needed mending and under it my bare knees and my heavy Dwarven boots caked with mud and dirt and dust.

Not to mention the Dwarven tattoos on my arms and my legs and the one on my face, and thinking to himself, by the Gods, what do I want with this strange little Dwarf-raised Ranger?

Yes, it was very likely that Denethor looked at me and saw a small, grubby freeloader, being foisted upon him by a large, grubby freeloader, and if I were him and I was expected to believe that I was some great wizard, I certainly would have thrown me out, without worrying if I landed on my furry feet, my pointy ears, or my dusty arse.

So I trusted the judgement of Rana Took, otherwise known as Thrima, daughter of Gimli.

At your service.

I walked into Denethor's presence for the first time and met a man who did not take seriously the idea that a short woman dressed all in brown and green, rather like a Ranger, could provide him with any service.

In fact, he seemed downright annoyed that Gandalf had deposited me in his kingdom.

In the handsome face of his ginger-haired youngest son Faramir, I saw compassion.

Faramir had been a student of Gandalf's, and he was a Ranger of Ithelien; maybe the old buzzard had spoken to Denethor's younger son, to put in a good word for me.

But, big, burly Boromir, the celebrated Boromir, Captain-General of Gondor, looked at me in wonderment, as if he had never seen the like of me before, and that I had ten heads instead of one.

Maybe it was the way that I was looking at him, for I had never had a man of any race turn my head as Boromir did.

He was as burly and rough and strong as any Dwarf, but twice their size.

Indeed, he was the most Dwarvish man I had ever seen.

I could almost picture him draining a mug of ale with one hand so that it ran into his beard and pissing into the fire with the other.

What a man he was, fine and strong and fully armed and filthy, as he was staring down the front of my tunic, with mud on his boots and dirt under his fingernails!

At least he did not look down at me, as if he had found me on the bottom of his shoe, as Denethor did.

"So, you are Gandalf's great gift to me? A Ranger of Eriador, sired by Halflings, and raised by Dwarves, a forester in brown and green. As if we have no more of your kind, except large and stronger and men, in Gondor."

It took me a moment to come back to my senses, and engage the Steward.

"Be fair with me, my lord, and do not judge me by the way I look after having rode eight hundred miles without changing these clothes, and few baths in between, to reach the White City. Yes, I was raised by Dwarves, but not just any, but by the kin of Thorin Oakenshield, Desolator of Smaug, King Under the Mountain. My foster-father is Gimli, son of Gloin, a Lord Under the Mountain, kin to Balin, the Lord of Moria. I was raised with Thror the Younger, the master blacksmith, and Thorin's nephew, who will someday be King Under the Mountain. Thror is my age-mate, my comrade, my best-friend and if I accept his proposal of Marriage, I will be Queen. And my father was a Hobbit, but not just any Hobbit, but a Took, Dagobert the Brave, son of the Thain of the Shire, a warrior and an adventurer from a long line of warriors and adventurers stretching back to the time of the Kings. Not to mention I can call Uncle Mr. Bilbo Baggins, who was the driving force, in driving Smaug the Destroyer to his death, among other mighty deeds. And I too, am the scion of kings. My mother was the Elvin prophetess Guldis the Seer, who was the foremost seer in our part of the world for a thousand years. I can call Rivendell my home as much as if I was born there. And I have been accepted at the court of my Grandfather, the Elvenking of Mirkwood, King Thranduil, who sat on his throne when your beautiful city was only a dream in the heart of Isildur. Not to mention, I am Ranagel the Green, Acolyte of Gandalf the Grey, and I am a Wizard of Middle Earth, accepted to the Order of Wizards by Saruman the White."

"The lady's pedigree is impressive, father. And we have always trusted Gandalf's council, in the past. He could have chosen any kingdom in which to place his Acolyte. But he chose yours." Denethor's second son, Faramir, suggested.

"My brother is right, father. It would not be wise to anger the Grey Pilgrim." Boromir broke in.

Denethor raised an eyebrow, and gave me a second look.

"That is all very well and good, but what is it that you can _do,_ Lady Ranagel?"

He was addressing me with a bit more respect now, but old Denethor still looked down his nose at me, and I desired greatly to punch the smirk from the face of Boromir, his heir.

"Many things, my Lord Denethor. Would you hand me that excellent axe that hangs behind your father's throne, Captain Boromir?" I asked Denethor's celebrated eldest son.

Boromir pulled the battle axe from the display on the wall.

With one hand.

I reached out to take it.

With one hand.

"Don't you need two hands, milady?" he asked me.

He held the axe handle to me from below his belt, as if he was offering me a weapon of a different kind, altogether.

So, that was the way this was going to be, was it?

"I have had cause to use two hands, in my dealings with Thror, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield. But I think that one will do for you, son of Gondor." I told him.

I took the axe, and though the handle was longer than the axe strapped to my saddle, I was surprise to find that it was lighter.

I hefted it in my hand.

"Strange. I thought the weapon of a man would be weightier than that of a Dwarf. " I commented, giving Boromir a withering look.

His manly pride looked suitably wounded, and I turned my attention to the weapon in my hand.

"But this is not a battle axe. It is only one for decoration. Please, Lord Denethor, may I open my pack and get Grindalamrad from my pack?

"What is a Grindalamrad?"

"That is the name of my axe. In Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves. Loosely translated, I suppose it would mean The Golden Braid of Death."

"Impressive moniker, little one. You may. But then bring your war-axe here."

I don't think that Denethor or Boromir thought that I was telling the truth until they saw Grindalamrad.

She is made from solid mithril, with a grooved handle that has a gold plated spike at either end, and on her blade there are runes and Dwarven knots engraved in gold filigree. She has another spike, also plated in gold on the other end of the blade, but this one is larger, and curved.

Thror made her for my hand alone, and she is like an extension of my body.

I will allow him to touch my Grindalamrad, since he made her.

But no other.

"You may see her, Milord Denethor. But no one touches her but me."

Boromir raised an eyebrow.

"That is an impressive weapon. And I can see the handiwork of Thror the Master Blacksmith in it. I take it a display of your prowess with your weapon is what you are about, my dear?" Denethor continued.

"Yes, milord. Can the keen eyes of Captain Boromir see the knothole, in the middle of the door to the left that opens his father's Great Hall to the world?"

"I can see it. Captain Beregond at the door can see it, too. But you stand all the way on the far side of our Great Hall. I could not throw that axe that far."

"Then you should get more practice, Captain-General Boromir. Imagine, my Lord Denethor, that knothole as the eyeball of an orc."

I turned and took aim.

Captain Beregond wisely stepped away from the door.

"_Barkur-zu ai-menu rumun_!" I roared, as I threw the axe.

Which is Khuzdul for "Up your arse with my axe!"

Less fine-sounding than "The axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!", but a common battle cry, nonetheless.

Keep in mind that in order to keep up with and be accepted even as the weakest of Dwarves, I had to become as strong as the strongest.

And Dwarves are, though smaller, stronger than men.

It was a strength I had never lost.

Grindalamrad didn't whistle through the air, she sang as prettily as the finest soprano in Rivendell, as she made her way from my hand to Denethor's door, struck the knothole dead center, and cleaved through the solid oak.

"Thor's hammer!" Boromir exclaimed.

"No, Warhammer. That is my Dwarf name. Fighter Warhammer. Or, as I am known to my Dwarf kin, Thrima Azag-bakhuz. At your service."

I bowed my head.

"But that is no Dwarf sword at your side!" Boromir protested.

"No. He is Elf-made."

I walked over to him, and drew my sword so close to his face that he should have flinched.

But, Boromir didn't.

"That is quite a blade, Lady Ranagel. And it seems to have been made for someone of your size." Denethor commented.

"This sword was made in Rivendell, by Lord Elrond's smith, as a gift to my father, Dagobert the Brave. A gift for his wedding to Guldis the Seer. He has been at my side since I was ten years old. He tasted his first Orc Blood in my service when I was fifteen. And he is called Baradhring, the Hammer of Fire, and has tasted the blood of many orcs and other foes of Middle Earth, since. The Dwarves are a warlike people, and my father, though a Hobbit, was a Took, a great warrior, from a long line of warriors and adventurers, known from the Brandywine River to the Lonely Mountain. With sword and axe, I am also at your service."

I bowed my head, again.

Denethor began to look interested.

"I have heard that you are a man of culture, though, and that you enjoy music. Storytelling. Song. Not only am I something of a musician, I have composed many poems and songs, and I have entertained in seven of the nine realms with my skill at storytelling and song. I am too, a woman of letters. I can speak, read, and write not just Westron, but Quenya and Sinadrin. I have with me a letter from Sindaris, the Librarian of Rivendell, recommending me highly as a woman of letters and culture. I can be Ranagel the Learned, and serve you not with brawn, but with brains."

Denethor laughed, sharply.

"Well said, Lady Ranagel. We already have an excess of brawn in Gondor."

I looked at his oldest son.

"I can see that."

"Do not mock me, woman!" Boromir snapped

"I do not mock you, me old son. That was a complement. Now, all of these are the ways in which I might serve you, Lord Denethor. But, above and beyond these, I am Ranagel the Green, the Wizard of the Wood and the Wild. All forests of Middle Earth are my home, from Mirkwood to Fangorn, none hold peril for me. I am a Wood Elf, and our blood is the oldest blood in Middle Earth. I can call beasts and birds to my service, and find my path through any wood. The trees will move for Ranagel the Green, if she asks them. I know the ancient secrets of the green womb of the Earth, and I have my fingers on Her pulse. I can sense the tiniest presence of the Dark Lord and his evil, the way a hound-dog can smell blood. The sleeping power of the Earth herself, of Wind and Water, of Earth and Fire, they are in my blood. And Gandalf has showed me how to reach deep into the memories of my ancient blood, to harness this power, and to use it to defend what is good and just and true in Middle Earth. I know where in Middle Earth the roots and branches of Yggdrasil the Tree of Life are anchored. The Ring of Power on my finger was forged a thousand millennia before the rise of the Dark Lord, when my people and our world were new. It does not draw power from some farcical demon living inside a volcano. It draws the power of the Earth from the blood of its wearer. For generations of men, Hobbits, and Dwarves beyond my reckoning, it has passed through my family, and I am the penultimate witch of my line. "

With that line of bollocks, I had even Boromir in the palm of my hand, and I used one of Gandalf's favorite dramatic pieces of magic.

I amplified my voice with depth and loudness and an echoing ring, lifted my hand with my mother's ring high in the air, and cast a bright, nearly-blinding, glowing green light which set my long hair on end.

"I am the Witch of the Wild and the Wood. I am the Avatar of the Great Mother. I am Ranagel the Green Wizard. I am the Taurilbereth, The Forest Queen Without A Name. Look on me ye mighty, and in thine evil, despair!"

And then I was just plain Randisbereth Took, again, dirty and travel-worn and small and sturdy, kneeling before my Lord Denethor.

I pulled the hood from out of the back of my traveling cloak, and bowed my head.

"And I am at your service, my Lord Denethor, Steward of Gondor, and at the service of your sons."

I knelt down and placed my sword on the ground in front of me.

Oh, I was certainly laying it on, thick, I was.

"Father, in all the three ages, Gandalf has never taken an Acolyte, and Saruman has never named a new Wizard. Not only does Gandalf honor us by offering his Acoylte in our service, he recognizes that Gondor is the mightiest Kingdom, and the worthiest, in Middle-Earth. Even if she is only a little witch with a Highland burr, we cannot insult him. And Gondor has need of a warrior who can throw an axe like that!" Boromir suggested to his father.

"If My Lord and his sons have no place or use for me here, I will gladly ride to Rohan, where King Theoden has made me welcome, in the past, and offer my service to him, and wait there, for Gandalf's return." I said.

Meekly.

Staring at the ground.

Wringing my hood in my small, callused, tanned hands.

Giving Denethor the opportunity to appear benevolent and wise.

The crafty old bastard actually put his hand on my shoulder, as if he was giving me his Blessing From On High.

"You shall not go to Rohan, my child! Forgive my churlishess, but these past weeks have been stiflingly hot, and there is no respite from the misery, especially for an old man, such as me, who can do little to allieviate his wretchedness. Gladly, I accept your service."

"As do I, milady." Faramir agreed.

Boromir was smirking at me again, but there was malice in his wolfish blue eyes.

As unlike Gandalf's as any I have ever seen.

"As do I." He fairly snarled.

"Thank you, my Lords. Wizard though I might be, I am a penniless stranger in a strange land. I will work hard to earn my right to bread and board. As hard as any who have served you ever have worked, I will work harder. But now I must get my axe."

I walked to the other end of Denethor's hall, pushed past the guard who was about to touch my axe with both hands, and freed her with one.

I packed Grindalamrad back into my pack.

Boromir stood over me, glowering.

"Why do you not let anyone touch that axe? Is there magic in it?"

"There is no such thing as a magic axe." I replied.

I was willing to be civil, but, among other things, he wanted a fight.

And I'll be damned if I'll not give any Man, Elf, Dwarf, or Orc a fight if that's what he wants.

"From what spell do you gain such great strength, witch?" he asked me.

"No spell. From a lifetime of wizardry, wandering, work, and war."

"You do mock me! Do you think you could best me, in combat, woman?"

"I'd be willing to try. Two falls out of three, Captain, sir. No eye gouging, no biting, no nipple twisting and no hits below the belt."

"Really? And to what end, then, if I won would you service me?" he sneered.

Service him?

_Service him!_

There was no mistaking that for anything but an indecent proposal.

"Boromir!" his brother gasped.

In reply, I made an extremely obscene gesture with my forearm and my fist, and, smacking my bicep and wagging my forearm, I spat on the floor by Boromir's boots.

I think you know gesture I mean.

"Go service yourself, laddie!" I snarled.

That was enough for Boromir.

He began to remove his surcoat, and I assumed a wrestler's stance.

"Come on, you big bully, let's have you, then! Let's have you!" I encouraged him.

Faramir came and stood between us.

"Are you mad, brother? Would you strike a woman who is half your size?"

"She is no woman, but a witch!"

"Get out of the way, my lad! I'll give the big bonny bastard the fight he wants!" I protested.

"Faramir! Leave the warriors alone. You do not understand their ways. Boromir, not in front of an audience, my son. If you and the lady wish to play, do it in private. But do not harm her. Or give her reason to harm you. " Denethor instructed his sons.

He left the throne room.

"We can take this discussion outside, Captain, sir! I wish to play, if you do, laddie. " I told Boromir.

"Are you sure it's a fight you want, witch?" he demanded.

I winked.

"Depends on which one of us falls first."

I turned to leave the throne room.

"Do not flatter yourself, witch! There are many women in Minas Tirith! I would not wait for my invitation if I were you!" he shouted after me.

I knew that I was going to have trouble with this one.

At least, I hoped I would.

I turned around, and drew my sword.

"You can take your invitation straight to Hela's realm, an' burn with it! I don't need a fookin' invitation!"

I tapped on the buckle of his belt with Baradhring's point.

"When I want it, laddie, I'll come and take it!"

Then, having had the last word, I left the throne room.

* * *

Faramir couldn't help but notice that Ranagel the Green was grinning with undisguised glee as she strode out of the throne room.

More strangely, Boromir had a wide grin on his face, too.

"Am I going blind? Did I not see Ranagel the Green threaten you with her sword? Then why was she grinning so widely, and why are you grinning more widely than she?"

"Didn't you hear what she said, brother? By the gods, I've never met a woman like that one!"

"I heard the entire exchange. It didn't sound friendly."

"The witch doesn't want a friend, Faramir! She wants a man. Well if it's a man she wants, she's found one in Boromir of Gondor! I'll not put up more of a fight than she wants to have, when the witch decides to come and take it!"

Faramir was at a loss.

His brother was speaking and acting as if he and Gandalf's apprentice were going to go to war against each other, but it was anything but war they both had in mind.

"Listen to yourself, Boromir! You're snarling like a dog, and fairly panting, too! What's come over you?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm in love!"

"In love? No, it's not obvious? It seems obvious to me that you two want to murder each other!"

Boromir laughed.

"I have not yet slain a woman with my sword, have I?"

Faramir still looked confused.

"You have a gentle nature and a gentle heart, my brother. I do not, and neither does Mithrandir's lusty witch. I must battle her for her body, and war to win her heart."

"How will you do such a thing?"

"I do not know. But there is no mind in Gondor better for tactics than mine. I will have to think on it."

* * *

After that performance, and I do mean performance, I went up in Denethor's estimation.

Enough that I was given my own quarters in a tower of his palace in the royal apartments.

I had my selection of several fine lutes, as much paper and ink as I wanted, and he put his craftsmen to work making me a fine brown leather jerkin with the pattern from my mother's ring on it, and boots to match.

To replace the ones I wore, worn with time and travel.

I would wear them when at court, but I still preferred my own clothes, of my own making, and Thror's boots.

Which reminded me, a stranger in a strange land, of hearth, home and happiness.

Things I did not posses in Gondor.

This is not to say that Denethor took me seriously.

To serve Denethor, was either to fawn over him obsequiously, or to stay out of his way, until he called for you, and then tell him what he wanted to hear.

I chose the latter route.

Faramir, who was weak in his father's favor but beloved by his brother, seemed to understand that Gandalf had sent me to Minas Tirith for other reasons than to amuse his father, and made it clear to me that should the occasion arise, his sword was at my command.

And, for the first time since I had arrived in Denethor's kingdom, I bowed my head and told a worthy fellow that I was at his service.

I think that Faramir and I came to so quick an understanding, because he could see that some deep sadness troubled me.

As deeply as it troubled him, that his father loved his brother more than he.

Because I did not know that of all the weapons one could wield, that love, of any sort, was the most terrible and destructive of all.

It seemed to me poetic justice that I should languish in this White City, one eye open for a foe who did not come, and the other closed as I went through the motions of courtly life, appearing two or three nights a week to play, or sing, or tell stories at Denethor's court, and as many days to advise him , greatly, on this or that matter that only he did not find trivial.

Gandalf had meant this task to make me.

Instead it had made me broken, little better than the despised Captain Faramir's companion on endless small journeys in fruitless tasks, or Denethor's fool.

I discovered the blessings to be devolved on a broken heart and a troubled mind by dark Gondorian ale, and spent as much time as I could a bit well-oiled.

It made my roads and my days in Gondor bearable.

I would have made myself far more well-oiled, but I had a strategy to plan in the war that I made made with the most important man in the kingdom, Boromir, Denethor's beloved eldest son and heir.

We had declared it, openly, and in front of witnesses when first we met, though I must say I think that he was the one who started it.

Boromir thought on his tactics, and I thought on mine.

He began his campaign in trying to isolate me, so that he would be my only possible ally at court.

Boromir constantly fixed me with malevolent looks, and always spoke in his father's ear against me.

I however, had an ally in Faramir, and Denethor was shrewd enough to see that his son and I were locked in combat, and he was determined not to take sides until our war was resolved.

Boromir's tactics turned the women of the court against me, and made his guards wary of "the witch", but I countered by trading Randisbereth Took and Rangel the Green in on Thrima the Terrible, Warhammer of the North, and strode about in my kilt and short-sleeved tunic, with all my tattoos on display, my sword hanging from one side of my belt and my axe from the other.

I was loud and raucous at meals, guzzling ale and pounding the table and telling my best and bloodiest of tall-tales and half-truths about my exploits and life in a Dwarven hall.

They may have been against Ranagel the Witch, but none at court were brave enough to stand against her, when she told tales of bearded women who made jewelry of the finger bones of the orcs they had slain, eating from platters made of the breastbone of a warg, mugs made from Orc's skulls, serving utensils from the bones of their legs and forks, spoons and knives from the bones of their arms.

To tell the truth about Boromir, I disliked him, immediately, and saw him as an enemy.

Not to mention, the way he smirked at me made me want to pound that smirk right off of his face.

On the other hand, I had never met a man before, from any race, who I wanted so badly, right from the first time I saw him.

It wasn't like me, to flirt so shamelessly with a fellow I didn't even know, but I wanted to take him outside and fight him, and if he fell twice, the third time would be me falling on him.

It was an awful feeling of desire I'd never had before.

I'd always known whether I wanted to, well, let's keep it clean, for now, and say kiss a man or kill him, but never had I wanted both.

But, I also knew he wanted to conquer me, and I would not let myself be conquered.

As for Boromir, he had never before been so challenged as I challenged him, in his father's hall, by any warrior of any kind, let alone a woman.

Women submitted themselves to him, and looked at him with veiled desire, through fluttering eyelashes and lowered lids.

And I threatened to pillage him as if I was a mercenary marauder, and he was some villager in a mud hut that I would take as part of the spoils of war.

Or maybe pillage is the wrong word.

I am a Took, I am, or will be, the Taurilbereth, and through the promise in blood of my father, Dagobert the Brave, to Gimli, son of Gloin, I am of the line of Durin the Deathless.

I have a tattoo on my right forearm, in runic script, these words, in Khuzdul: "You can Kill a Dwarf, but you can never Vanquish one."

As you can imagine, I do not submit.

As for Boromir, he sees himself, a hero and warrior of Numenorian stock, the Heir of the Stewardship of Gondor, the Pride of the West, as not just the finest man in his country, but the finest in Middle- Earth.

And even as Faramir assured me that Boromir had great affection for me, beneath his, and I quote "chest-pounding warmongering and exaggerated machismo", that is neither here nor there.

Because I can swagger and spit and pound my chest and swing my axe with the best of any Dwarves, let alone any Man or Elf.

But even so, love may be covered up and kept secret in sighs and whispers, but lust is as loud and unruly as an Easterling's elephant without his trainer.

Though we were at war, when I was in the same room with Boromir, his eyes never left my body, and he gave me the same kind of greedy looks I gave him.

If we had to pass when we walked, both of us always made an effort to bump, or brush past each other.

And then we'd both sneer.

Or snarl.

My first impression of the heir was that despite his being a great warrior, and an obviously fine specimen of what was left of the blood of Numenour, that his brother was the better man.

He did nothing in the first month or so that I abided in Gondor to change my mind.

Although Faramir was not as fierce, neither was he so self-assured and headstrong as Boromir, and he had far less of the air of entitlement, or the aspect of the brute.

Although, it is that aspect of the brute, where Faramir was fair, almost as fair as an Elf, and Boromir was more burly, and rough in his good looks, that I was loath to say he turned my head.

For, as of that time I liked Faramir, but I thought Boromir was an arrogant bastard, if you will excuse my rough language.

I suppose, before we get on, I ought to tell you what he looks like.

Boromir was about the same height as Strider, something over six foot, but he was broader in the shoulders and, like Thror, he was burly, with a barrel chest.

And long legs.

When you're a short woman, there's something about a man with long legs, especially if they're thick and muscular, that just sort of grabs you by the throat.

I couldn't help but want to see more of those legs of his, maybe get a look to see if the golden-red hair that peeked out of the top of his tunic sprouted up all across his barrel chest.

He was a fair man, fair haired, and fair skinned, with blue eyes a shade lighter than Thror's or Gandalf's.

His hair was straight, but it was thick, and not at all fine, and it was this golden blond that had red in it, a sort of golden red color, and his beard was the same shade.

You'd be hard pressed to meet a man more handsome, because he wasn't pretty, he was handsome, with a strong chin, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a fine specimen of an aquiline nose that had probably been straight before he'd broken it a few times.

To look at Boromir, it made me wish he was less of a bastard to me.

I wouldn't have minded drowning my sorrows in him, rather than endless mugs of dark Gondorian beer.

No less a bastard, mind you, I like a man who's a bit of a bastard.

Just less of a bastard to me.

It was only a matter of time before we came to battle in the war that Boromir and I were waging against each other.

* * *

As August ended, there was a miserably humid and hot week where every day there was nothing but rain, day in and day out.

My only joy was in that I could spend most of my days outdoors, and without that, I had little to do but drink and brood.

I had never drank so much in my life as I had since coming to Minas Tirith, and that week was the high point, or perhaps I should say low point of it.

I had been stone drunk for seven days, and it had left me both mean and randy, out for blood and out for trouble, by any means I might get either, or both.

Wait.

Before I tell you this story, I have to tell you about how I came to be quite so angry.

It was not just a rainy week, but also a stormy one, and in the middle of a wild and windy night, I was awakened by the loudest clap of thunder I had heard all summer, followed by a sharp cracking sound, and then, I saw in the light of the next flash that it was raining in the tower in which Denethor had lodged me.

I looked up and I saw the moon through a large burning hole in the tower roof that the rain was rapidly extinguishing.

Cursing, I got out of bed and dressed, quickly, amid embers, debris, rain and ash.

Then, there came a mighty wind, and I grabbed my pack and dove under the bed as bits of wood and moss and ash and crumbled stone rained down from above, the wind doing a bit more dirty work on what the lightening had started.

"A fine fookin mess this is! It's why Dwarves and Hobbits sensibly live in the ground rather than in the sky!" I said.

I was thinking of what to do next when I heard footsteps on my stair.

Heavy, running footsteps.

"Ranagel! Lady Ranagel! Where are you? Are you hurt?"

It was Boromir, and his voice was as filled with panic as if it had been his own brother in the tower room.

Not to mention that all the sudden I was Lady Ranagel, as opposed to witch, or another word that rhymes with it, and many other less flattering names.

"I'm hidin' under the bleedin' bed! Mind you, the whole fookin' ceiling's comin' down!"

That didn't bother Boromir, he crashed in the door, and hauled me out from under the bed.

"What about me things? I need me things!"

Boromir hauled my pack out, too, and put it over one shoulder.

Then, against my protests that I could walk just fine, he held me fast against his chest, and carried me out, using his own body to shield me from a few small bits of falling debris.

He didn't put me down until we were at the bottom of the stairs.

Even then, and right in front of his brother and his father, Boromir got down on his knees and threw his arms around me.

He buried his face in my hair and hugged me so hard I could hardly breathe.

"By the Gods, Rana, I thought I had lost you!" he exclaimed.

I looked over Boromir's broad shoulder, at Denethor and Faramir, with a puzzled expression on my face.

Faramir looked just as puzzled, and Denethor smiled, knowingly.

I hugged Boromir back, and stroked his hair, soothingly.

But awkwardly.

What else was I to do?

"It's alright, me old son. I'm a bit wet and dirty, and I might have a bruise or two, but I'm not a bit dead. I can't say as I mind, a cuddle and a truce out of you, but I would like to breathe, though, if I could, my laddie." I said.

Boromir let me go, and he stood up, abruptly.

"Well. You're not crushed, then. Witch. Good. After all, Gandalf did put my house in charge of you. And here are my men. The roof of the tower is ruined, and some of the stone structure, too. We will shore it up for the night, and cover the hole, and begin repairs, tomorrow. Come, now, lads."

And then he was back up the stairs.

"What in the name of Mahal's holy breeches was that about? Am I to act now, as if all of that never happened?" I asked Boromir's father and brother.

Faramir shrugged, helplessly.

"I have never seen him act this way." He said.

"Boromir is a proud man. He has never been humbled, before." Denethor said.

"By Thor's hammer, and not the one he carries in his hand, I've not tried to humble Boromir!" I loudly protested.

"All men are humbled, eventually, by the love of a woman. Faramir, go and help your brother, don't stand here, gawking. Come, my child. You may sleep in Faramir's rooms, tonight. But, you may use my bath. In your next chamber, you will have your own…"

I slept in the Steward's chamber, that night, in case Faramir was in need of his bed, on a rather large chaise lounge, and it was much airier and cooler in Denethor's room than my stuffy little tower with one window.

I was a bit confused, though, how this fellow who hated the sight of me was suddenly panicked for my welfare.

In the morning, when I tried to extend our brief truce into an honorable peace, and thank Boromir for his concern, he just sneered at me again.

Well, I'd had enough of his wargames, and as we were both drunk that night, there was something bound to happen.

I think Boromir was thinking the same thing, because the hour was late, and both of us were stumbling around in breeches, boots and tunic, as mean, drunk and surly as we could have been when we stumbled into each other as he staggered to his rooms.

Boromir had a bottle of wine in his hand, and when I crashed into him, he spilled what didn't fall on the floor all down the front of his half-open tunic, and on his chest, and all over me, as well.

The time for battle had come at last, and Boromir took the offensive.

"Watch your step, hedge witch!"

"What did you call me, you spoilt drunken bastard?" I countered

Boromir looked confused as he pushed himself off the wall and regained his footing, but then he smirked that malicious grin at me, again.

"I called you a hedge witch. That's what you are. You don't fool me with your magic tricks and your great words. And your elaborate pedigree. You're no lady. You're certainly not the Taurilbereth of legend come again. You're a liar and a whore! You began your whoredom lying with dwarves that sprung up out of rocks, and worked your way up to wizardry on your back. And those good men who would not roll for you, they met their end at the point of some Dwarf axe, or…"

I was tired of this war of words.

There comes a time when actions can speak more eloquently than words can, and this was that time.

What more there was to Boromir's drunken abuse I do not know, because I finally punched that smirk right off his smug face.

To his credit, I think, had he been sober, he might have staggered back, but he would not have fallen on his pompous ass on the flagstones.

He put his hand to his bloody lip, and worked his bruised jaw, then looked at his blood on his fingers and then, wonderingly, at me.

As if he could not believe that I had, quite literally, struck the first blow.

And I had Boromir at an advantage, because, he was a man of honor, and an honorable man does not strike a woman who is half his size.

Well, not usually.

"You Halfling bitch, you hit me!" Boromir howled in outrage.

It had felt good to hit him, half-dressed as he was, and I was glad to finally have my fight.

"And knocked you on your pompous arse! Last night you were mad from grief when you thought the ceiling had fallen on me, and now it's a fight you want? Well, what's the matter wi' you? Ye've been spolin' for this fight since I've got here, don't you want it now you've got it? I know I do, by Tyr's stone bollocks! Get up, pretender! Get up, usurper! Get up off your unworthy arse that will sit uneasily as your witless mad father's on Isildur's throne, an' fight like a man, you bastard! My Mahal who made my father and Odin who made Mahal, I'll put you in your fookin' place!" I encouraged him.

Those were fighting words, and they made Boromir fighting mad.

And didn't he look as handsome as a man could, drunk and angry.

Drunk and angry enough to forget what honor strictly dictated and he rushed at me headlong, with a roar.

Had he not been drunk and furious, the wild swings he made would probably have connected, but as he was drunker, and now, angrier than me, it was my swing, to his nose, that connected, again.

And back down on his arse did he go.

Boromir looked at me with such a perplexed and outraged expression on his face that I very nearly laughed.

"You've fookin' well hit me again! Stop hitting me, witch, for I could crush you like an insect, if honor did not prevent me from doing so!" he protested.

Ah, those wondrous Westron words that I knew no equal of in Quenya or Sindarin, though I am sure they exist.

Gandalf pretends it does not offend him, but he abhors cursing as much as I enjoy it.

And if Boromir of Gondor thought that he could out-cuss the daughter of Gimli, the angriest dwarf in Erabor, and the comrade of Thror, the most profane fellow in Middle Earth, he was sadly mistaken.

"You've just tried to crush me laddie! It wasn't honor that prevented you, but being a big, clumsy, drunken oaf! I'm not going to hit you again, am I? Mind, I was going to kick you in the bollocks, but the way you take a fookin' tumble, I'm beginnin' to think maybe you've got a cunny, instead! Which would suit you well, as that's what you are! An orc's cunny, at that! C'mon, try it again, my lad, you've got one fall left! One more fall and you're mine! And if it has to be at the point of me fookin' axe, I won't lose sleep over it!"

Boromir struggled to his feet, again.

"By the gods, witch, you have a filthy mouth on you! A man cannot pay some whores enough money to use words like that, but they trip freely from your tongue!"

"Another insult! Put up your fists, let's have you then!"

Boromir wiped his bloody nose, and suddenly he was laughing.

"Give me a minute to stop bleeding! Then you'll have me, alright! This war between us has gone far enough, if it is going to come to blows. For I will not strike you, and if you strike me in earnest with your mighty little fists, then I will be black and blue and bloody! So it's two falls out of three you want? Well I've taken 'em. Does that mean I'll find out if you fuck like a soldier, too?"

"I hope you don't! Most common soldiers fook like Dwarf men are rumored to And like Elf men actually do. Badly."

"There is nothing that Boromir, Captain of Gondor, does badly!"

He picked up his wine bottle and had a little drink.

Then he beat his chest with his fist, by Durin's beard, he did.

"I don't fuck like a soldier, woman, I fuck like a king!"

He smiled again, winked at me, and wiped blood and wine from his mouth with his sleeve.

"You're not so bad for a witch, are you? Take your spell off me, and you and I, we'll get along."

Just as my anger was beginning to fade, Boromir made me furious, again.

"I'm no hedge witch who casts spells and curses! The only thing I've put on you is my two fists."

Boromir pushed me against the wall by my door, and put both of his arms on either side of me on the wall so I couldn't move.

As well I thought he would.

"You have to have put a spell on me, witch! How else can it be explained?"

"How can what be explained? Why you're such a dim fookin' brute? One moment you're fawnin' over me like I was some kind of Elvin princess and the next, you're sneerin' at me as if I was born of an orc! Are ye stupid, man, or is there somethin' about me that addles your brains?"

"Say what you like of me, I can't take my eyes off you! Yet, my love for you is blind. You are never far from my thoughts, for never have I seen or known a woman the like of you, Ranagel. Ever since you walked into my father's Great Hall, with a sword hanging from your belt and a strut in your steps! You've bewitched me and blinded me. When you threw your axe, the way you did, and it sang through the air, so sweet and true? My heart dropped into my guts. I'm mad for you, woman! Mad!"

"That makes two of us. And unless you're a sorcerer, I don't think it's magic that's involved. Or love, neither."

"So, then even if you're not a liar, you admit that you're a whore?"

I know that sounds like a terrible insult, but that's not the way Boromir meant it.

"Not for just any man! But that's the part you like, isn't it?"

"I think I know what part you like."

I laughed, drunkenly, and so did Boromir.

He grabbed my hand, raised it to his bloody lips and kissed it, and then he pulled my hand under his tunic and clapped it on the mighty horn of Gondor.

If you catch my meaning.

We both laughed again, like fools.

"Who's got the war hammer, now?" he asked me.

Once more, Boromir wiped blood and wine from his lips.

He kissed me as hard as I had hit him.

I didn't move my hand away, or try to stop him, did I?

"What do you wear, Thrima Warhammer, under your kilt in these, the dog days of August?" he whispered in my ear.

Boromir started his hand at my knee and slowly slid it up my leg, under my kilt and to the inside of my thigh.

And he didn't stop there, let me tell you.

"Just as I thought. Only the heat of your forge for my steel." he chuckled, in a low voice, thick with wine and lust.

I think Boromir was about ready to scoop me up and carry me into his bedroom, for a nice sweaty fit of drunken venery.

Or maybe he was just going to pull down the front of his breeches and push aside the flap on my kilt and have it away.

And, despite my better judgment, I was quite ready to let him.

For whatever his pleasure might be, it was sure to be mine as well.

"You silver tongued devil, I know a better use for that talented mouth of yours."

"And I know a better use for that filthy mouth on you, witch. Let's you and I have our battle. But we will not fight it with our fists…"

But, by this time all the commotion brought Faramir out into the hallway.

I knew Faramir, better than his brother, which is why it seemed madness to me it was Boromir I should want, and I knew he was a good and decent man, and he'd break up this madness, and put his brother and I both to bed, in our separate rooms.

"It's your brother, come to make us act like decent, civilized folk! Quick, lie down on the floor and pretend you've fallen on your face!"

"A fine idea, witch!"

Somehow, now, when he called me "witch" it seemed to be in affection rather than out of malice.

Funny, that.

Faramir found me, drunk and merry, hauling his brother, also drunk and merry, to his feet.

So drunk that he was merry even though his nose and lip were bloody.

"Your pretty face, me old son! Come along to my chamber, I've got a fresh bottle and I'll clean your ugly mug up for you!" I exclaimed.

Boromir located his wine bottle and had a wee drink.

"Faith, this wine tastes bad with blood mixed in it! Faramir! My brother!"

Boromir, stumbled to Faramir, half-falling on him, and hugged his brother in such a way that he nearly cut off his breath and got blood and a splash or three of wine all over Faramir's nightshirt.

"We have called a truce, my brother! Come and drink with us!"

He was really putting on an act, making himself seem hardly sober enough to take off his boots, let alone his pants.

"I think you've both had enough to drink. Excuse him, Rana. I do not know my brother, commonly, to get this drunk."

"An' I meself, do not commonly get this drunk! But I've little else to do. Haven't I?" I bellowed.

"Can you manage, Rana?" Faramir asked.

I took the opportunity to slap the heir of the stewardship on the arse.

And not in an unfriendly way, either.

"Oh, I can manage the big, burly, bonny bastard! Gives me something to do. We'll go to your room, Captain-General, because it's off to sleep with you."

The largest door, at the end of the hallway opened.

"Faramir! Mind your own business, boy!"

"But, Father, they're drunk…"

"And? Don't act like an old woman, minding your brother's business and that of my wizard!" Denethor snapped.

"But Boromir's fallen down…"

"And the lady will see to him. Be off with you! Now!"

Denethor slammed his door shut.

By this time, Boromir and I were in his chamber.

But we felt awful about it, getting Faramir in hot water with his brother.

Boromir opened his door a crack.

"Faramir…"

"I know what you're about, Boromir! Make very sure your attentions are welcome, or you'll get your head split apart by a battle-axe! I hope, for your sake, you are not too drunk. Or that you will not regret your drunken hastiness in the morning." Faramir replied.

Boromir shut the door again.

We just looked at each other for a long, awkward moment.

"Well, that's spoilt the moment, hasn't it?" I said.

"There's always another moment to be had. But not with me bleeding all over myself, and smelling like a distillery. I had better wash up."

Boromir stumbled a little, on his way through a door I did not see to his water closet.

I never had a w.c. in my chamber.

Faramir and I shared the w.c at the far end of the corridor, and from the look of the pipes, it had been installed during the time of the Kings, when such things were invented.

As it was summertime, I did not mind the lukewarm temperature of the bathwater, but I was not looking forward to what it would be like in winter.

Meanwhile, I sat on Boromir's bed, which was twice the size of mine, and had four posters and bed-curtains all around.

You've never seen such a bed, or I hadn't.

You could have fit five of me in it, and from the height of it I'd say there had to be three mattresses.

It was very bouncy, too.

I didn't know what I should do, so I just sat on the end of the bed and bounced, until Boromir came back, in his breeches and his boots.

He laughed to see me.

"What are you doing, you an Elf as old as time, bouncing on my bed like a little girl?"

I stopped bouncing long enough to set him right.

"I'm not as old as time, and I'm hardly an Elf! I've seen one winter less than you. Durin's beard, don't even think of me as an Elf! I am a Hobbit, a Took, from the only line of Hobbits who ever do anything as queer and Tookish as have adventures with Elves, Dwarves and wizards! I was raised in the Shire and in Buckland, and by Dwarves, in the Blue Mountains and under the Lonely Mountain. I am an Elf only by coincidence of blood. Old as time! I was but 20 when my father, Gimli, apprenticed me to Gandalf. I went right from his house and that of my Hobbit kin to Gandalf's charge, and this is the first time in my life I have been without father, master, or kin for so long. By the Shirefolk's reckoning I will not be grown until I am 33, and Dwarves think you young and stupid until you are about 75. So, I am not very old, at all. Quite young enough to bounce on this very bouncy bed, by Thor!"

I took off my boots, stood on top of the mattress and started bouncing on it in earnest.

"Once, when Gandalf and I stayed at Edoras, we had a bed this bouncy. Not this fine, but quite very much this bouncy, and I kept him up half the night, jumping on it. But what else can you do with a bouncy bed? I suppose you cannot, because you are so tall, but there's fun to be had in being a little Hobbit!"

I bounced up very high, landed on my arse, then bounced up again, and landed on my belly, and then I was short of breath from bouncing, so I rolled over and righted myself.

"If I had a bed like this I wouldn't be drinking so much. I've never drunk so much in me life as I have since I've been here. I've got to stop, because look where it's led me. Jumping up and down in strange men's beds." I panted.

Boromir sat down on the end of his bed and took off his boots.

"And you do not spend so much time in the beds of strange men?"

"Of course not!"

"So, I am a stranger to you, Rana. But you call to my brother, 'Hullo, my friend!' Your brother Ranger. Gandalf's student, as well. Faramir is your friend, and I am a stranger. It is my own fault."

I sat beside him.

"Mahal's forge, man, don't get melancholy on me, now! This is no time for talking. It'll ruin everything. Just take off your breeches and we'll talk, later!"

Boromir's brow furrowed.

"But I am the bastard you suspected that I am, to lure you here when you have been drinking. For you might as well be a maid."

"I'll not lie to you, Boromir, I have been no maid for almost fifteen years."

"You may have had experience, but you cannot have lain with many men. That is what I mean. And it is too much dark Gondorian ale that is stronger than what you are used to drinking that brings you to my bed. Come the morning, you will look at me with accusation in your eyes and I will be ashamed. You must think me a boor and an oaf. Because I've been both to you, since you came to Minas Tirith. It's only because, you upset me, woman. You do."

"Upset you? You upset me, too, if that's what you'd like to call a madness like this! You'd upset any woman with eyes in her head and a breath left in her body. Quite the opposite. I've been fookin' miserable all this miserable hot month. Tonight, though, we've had a lovely punch-up, and a nice conversation and you've got this bouncy bed and I am having a good time, so don't spoil it!"

"Why have you been so unhappy? Have I been so mean and cruel?"

"You? No, my lad, you're just a bastard. And I like a man who's a bit of a bastard, don't I? No, it's not you. It's me. I might as well spend the rest of my days in strange men's beds, because I have brought shame on my dead father's name of Took, and shame on my Dwarf-father's house. Durin's beard, that's done it. Now I'm in a rotten mood, again."

"You should not be. For I will avenge your shame!" Boromir declared.

Rather drunkenly, but with his heart full of chivalry.

"Who is he, then, this beast who has shamed you? What Elvish bastard a thousand years old, and you only nine and twenty, has told you pretty lies and left you with an ugly fate, crushing your warrior's heart under his silken little feet?" Boromir fumed.

"No Elf. But a man who has meant more to me than any man save my kin. My Master."

"But Gandalf is your Master, given charge of you by your kin, why in the name of Odin does he march you to the other side of the world and leave you here? Alone, where you are a stranger, thousands of leagues from your kin and their homes and your father's house?"

"Is a wizard a man, like other men, Boromir?

"He has two arms and two legs."

"Right. And he has what's between them. And so have I."

I thought, for a minute about that bouncy bed at Edoras.

And Gandalf, with his long, lanky, rangy body, all flat muscle and sinew, with silver white hair like snow dusted over its long length, wearing nothing but his beard and a bemused smile as he laid back in the pillows and smoked his pipe and occasionally laughed as I bounced myself stupid and sang a silly song I was making up as I went along about how much fun it was to be in a warm safe bed again.

Thinking on how I would never just quietly lie in some warm safe bed with Gandalf, again, and smoke and make him laugh with my silly songs when his brow furrowed with worry made me feel absolutely desolate.

Meanwhile, Boromir looked as shocked at the thought that Gandalf might be a man as other men are, as I had been when it occurred to me.

He sat back down on the bed.

"By the gods, I never thought of that! I suppose a wizard would, wouldn't he? And, well, there he is, an old man, charged with keeping a pretty young women. Protecting her. Teaching her. Spending every moment together, both waking and sleeping. Travelling together. Sleeping in the same beds, and under the same blanket. And your blood is hot, Rana. I can see where temptation might have overcome the wizard. But it seems crueler than is Gandalf's nature. To love you and then to spurn you."

"He tells me it is because he is my Master and he cares for me that he's done it. He says the time of his kind in Middle Earth is ending. Love, however, as you mean it, that was never involved."

Boromir shook his head.

"So that is what troubles you, and drives you to drink, and sing sad songs. Don't you see? You have been cruelly been spurned, not just by a lover, but by a lover who is teacher and mentor to you. A far older man, your Master, who your father charged with your care."

Boromir grimaced, thinking on it.

He put his arms around me, and held me against his chest.

I did not stop him.

"It's not right! Not a thing a man of any sort should do to a woman of any kind! Well then, if he thought better of himself, he could have just told you that he had , I don't know, dangerous Wizard's business to attend to that he couldn't have chanced sending a novice on, and sent your back to your kin. And the nephew of Thorin Oakenshield, who awaits your return."

"It would have been kinder."

"It would have. But who are we to question the will of a wizard?" I asked, bitterly.

Boromir was too angry to detect the sarcasm in my voice.

"Bollocks! If a wizard acts like a man, then a man can question his actions!"

"I agree with you. That is why I am so angry. Because I feel I've just been thrown away, like an old boot."

"It's a cruel thing that's been done to you, and I am sorry if I have shown you further cruelty. I really did think that you were an old witch trying to ensnare me in her fringe. I didn't know you were a woman of my own age."

"Trying to ensnare you in me fringe."

"Trying to find a man who will not be cruel to her. Some men might, but I see no wrong in a woman seeking a man's company. Especially a woman alone, thousands of leagues from home, and with no friends and no kin."

I had been merry, and then melancholy, and now in my drunkenness fury seized me, and I began pacing about Boromir's vast chamber and shouting, angrily.

"Durin's short and curly beard, what could have possessed Gandalf? Denethor needs a wizard, he says! Since when does a man with a third eye need a wizard? Well, maybe he bloody does, when something's wrong! But what's he to do wi' me the rest of the time? It's why I offered my services as a soldier, a scholar, a troubadour. Why should your father, Steward of the largest Kingdom of Men in Middle Earth be expected to feed me and clothe me, and put a roof over me head, for nothing?"

I spoke bitterly, spitting out the words in pride and anger.

And laughed just as bitterly, and without mirth.

"I was raised by the Shirefolk, and by the Dwarves. And by both their reckoning, I have been shamed, and my father's house has been shamed. I'm sorry for the way I've been actin', Boromir. I wish I had more to offer you than my anger and my lust. But I can't even see the better side of meself. Not after what's been done to me. And no way to avenge the bitterness of my shame. You cannot do it with your sword. For even if he was not a Wizard, I would not like to see Gandalf dead."

I had shouted myself out, so I sat down on the bed, again.

"I did not say I would avenge your honor by my sword. By any reckoning, men's, too, there is shame. But the shame is on the Grey Wizard, not you. Your father entrusted you to his care, as his Apprentice. The shame is on him. For taking liberties an older, wiser man should not take with a young woman in his care."

"You make me sound too innocent in the matter. He tried to be noble and take the high road, but I wasn't too interested in that. After all, I am sure of Gandalf knew I was so angry and so much hurt, he would think better of it. He probably already has. Between now and whatever time he returns to Gondor, he will have spent many hours in his own council, going back and forth, and changed his mind ten times. I should not be so bitter. It gives you the wrong impression that I am some maiden fair and that he is some sort of despoiler. I was despoiled before I met Gandalf."

"Should you be any the less angry for it? I am angry with Mithrandir, for hurting you. I am angry with the Halfling who waits for you in your Shire, and the Dwarf, who looks for you under the Lonely Mountain, and the Ranger who looks for you to come riding out from between the trees. Angry because they have had what I want. And when you leave me you will return to them."

"Faith, Boromir, I have not been had by so many! Still, what you want is my love. Or so you say. No man has had that. It has always been with me, the same as the kind of love comrades and friends have for each other. "

"And for me?"

"I hardly know you."

"And I hardly know you. But still, I love you."

"Well, I am not a sentimental woman!"

"And I am not a sentimental man!"

That coaxed a laugh out of Randisbereth Took, also known as Thrima the Terrible, also called Ranagel the Green.

"Then it will not trouble you if I come right to the point, my ardent suitor? Who goes from hating me to loving me after a heavy storm and a drunken brawl? Do you know how many men I have met, in my travels, nay, how many dwarves and elves as well, who wanted me to crawl under their blankets?"

"Many?"

"Many. Some women, I dare say, have had many more, but many is a good estimate. Do you know how many of them have protested their love? Most. Not many at all I have let succeed. It would be one more, but there is a Ranger of my acquaintance, the citadel of whose virtue I cannot storm. Do you know why so few? Because, I will not bed a stranger. Whether I want to, or not."

"But I am no stranger to you, Rana. Faith, you are a stubborn woman! And this is the Trickster's work, for only Loki himself would play such a cruel joke. That I come to love a woman, of all who have wished it from me. And the woman I love is the one in Middle Earth who laughs at it."

"You do not know me well enough to love me. But I wouldn't call you a stranger, either."

"I have never had a woman for a comrade, or a friend. But if you are worthy of the friendship of my brother, and the comradeship of the heir to the King Under the Mountain, then I would be a fool not to let you be the first. Only, do not tell me that I am a stranger to you, again. Or that you are a stranger, here, in my kingdom. You may not have kin, but you have me, and you are no stranger, unwanted and burdensome. I would have you hit me ten times with your strangely mighty little fists, and reduce my face to pulp, and it would hurt me less."

"Now, that sounds far more genuine to me than all this talk of love."

"Would you rather I went back to cursing you?"

"I would. You've got quite a mouth on you, me old son. I'm sure if you said a few of the other kind of words of love to me, we'd get the fire lit under this evening, again."

"What did I last say, there, in the corridor? Ah, yes. Something about the heat of your forge…"

We were still sitting there, on the end of the bed, Boromir in just his breeches and me with my hair and my clothes in disarray, after having bounced on the bed until I was dizzy.

Boromir held me close, once more and kissed me again, like he had in the hallway, and didn't he have his hand under me kilt, again.

"You'll burn your fingers, laddie."

"Then let me burn white hot in the fire of your forge, and drown me, woman, in the fountain of your love!"

Oh, that did it!

And he could have had me without those dirty, pretty words, too.

Had we fallen back onto the bed, I'm sure that it would have been a good long time before we got up out of it, again.

But, it was just then that, and with a great flourish, Denethor stormed the room.

Boromir, pulled his hand out from where it shouldn't have been like it was on fire, and jumped up from his bed as if it was catching.

"Father, I can explain!"

Had Denethor suspected Faramir of demolishing the citadel of my virtue in a drunken stupor, he would have probably grabbed him by the hair and dragged him around the room, but although he seemed none the less embarrassed, Denethor did not berate his favorite son.

"You do not have to, my son. I was a young man, once. But now I am an old man, and I am responsible for the young woman who comes to my house, from Mithrandir's apprenticeship, and the house of Gimli, son of Gloin, of the line of Durin. Therefore, Lady Ranagel, I have come to escort you to your new chamber, my child. For I know that our ale is stronger than that with which you are acquainted, and I would not have shame brought upon you, or your Master, or the house of your father, over a misunderstanding."

"Father, I have conducted myself as a gentleman would." Boromir protested.

"That is not how it appears, my son."

"You think that I have forced my attentions upon your Wizard?"

"No, Boromir. I think that when you are drunk, and the young lady is drunker than you, that you should not have your greedy hands beneath her skirts, such as they are, no matter how welcome they may be. Appearances are what are important, especially when there will soon be an outpost of Dwarves from the Lonely Mountain in the White Mountains, and the very walls have eyes and ears. Better that you both appear above reproach. Whether you are above it, or not. And better that the lady is sober when she decides how well you should be acquainted with her."

Denethor led me not to the room I had been in, but moved a tapestry along the far wall of Boromir's chamber, and stepped on a raised stone on the floor that lay behind it.

A passage opened in the wall.

He moved the tapestry on the other side, also, and beyond was a much larger chamber, the size of Boromir's, and I could see by looking through the doorway that all of my things, as little as they were, had also been moved.

"Your Master has not put you in my service merely to mark time, child. He expects that I will teach you some things about this world, as well. This is your first lesson. One you have not learned from the humble Halflings, or the forthright Dwarves, but that you must know if you are to spend any time in the kingdoms of men. It is not virtue which is important to men, but the appearance of virtue. Even the most well-behaved of courtly ladies have their love affairs. Be cautious. Be discreet. And never succumb to temptation in drunkenness. Wait until you are sober. In drunkenness, there can be neither caution, nor discretion. I bid you good night."

I discovered a bed in the room that was a bit smaller than Boromir's, but every bit as fine and bouncy, and a fine bathroom in stone and marble that was fit for a king.

Or for his mistress.

I laughed out loud to think of myself as the mistress of a prince of men, because the very idea conjures up someone taller and fairer than I, wearing some kind of elaborate dress, and a lot of face-paint.

Imagine a little Hobbit like me, the official mistress of the heir to the Stewardship of Gondor, Pride of the West.

I thought I'd certainly gone up in the world.

"I wonder what Gandalf would say to that?" I said, aloud.

And I could almost see him, sitting in a chair beside my giant bathtub, smoking his pipe and making some witty comment.

Which made me think on how much I missed the silly old fool's company.

That made me feel a little melancholy, but only a little, so I decided to go to bed before a foul mood took me over, once more.

* * *

In the morning, I opened every vial of bath oil that was in my palatial W.C., and drew a bath and poured some in.

It made a thick foam of soapy bubbles, and I went and got my pipe and had a smoke and a fine bath.

I lingered in the tub, and I was thinking on the previous night, when, without so much as knocking, in walked Boromir.

He was still dressed in only his breeches.

"Good morning, my worthy adversary. Has our truce held, or are we at war, again?" I asked.

"Our truce holds. I have come to make peace between us And to offer you an apology. For last evening. I was very drunk, and I behaved like an animal."

"Well, I was very drunk, myself. And I'm sorry to have put that bruise on your face and that cut on your lip. I did not mean to hit you so hard! I would not have actually struck you at all, had I been sober."

"Are you sorry…for the rest?"

"I'm sorry your father walked in. It would not have been the most prudent thing to do, and I know I should not say so, but I cannot say I would not have woke this morning smiling at you."

"Still, you are smiling at me. Rana, aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing here?"

He walked past the tub and over to the khazi.

I admit, when he turned to it, I craned my neck.

"I don't need an audience!" he laughed.

I turned my head.

"Well I can't very well tell you to do your pissing in your own bog, can I? These are the apartments of the prince's mistress. And as I'm the girl you've picked for the job, and I've taken the rooms, what can I say? Alright, I'll bite. What are you doing here?"

"This is my bog. And Faramir's, though he's supposed to use the servants', by my father's rules. But we're not boys. We don't follow all of Father's rules. I came to tell you to finish your bath, and don't use all the hot water. That, and Faramir's outside, dancing from one foot to the other, so, hurry up, if you can."

"Oh, that's a fine thing! All three of us shaving in the same mirror every morning!"

"Rana! You don't really have a beard, do you?"

"No more than any other dark haired woman. I do grow a little down on my upper lip, and a few hairs on the underside of my chin. To tell you the truth, if I let it go for a month or three, I grow enough to make a tiny little braid, about the size of my pinky finger. It never goes any further than that. But when I leave Erabor, off it goes. I wouldn't have told you, but if we're all going to be using the same bathroom, you'll find out."y

"As long as you don't mean a proper beard, Rana. My faith, I could never get used to that!"

I said something in Khuzdul, and laughed.

"What did you say?"

"I shouldn't tell you."

"Tell me anyway."

"I'm thinking of how it would translate. Something like, never marry a man who will not kiss you below your beard as well as above it. And you did say you wanted to make peace between us."

Boromir thought about that for a minute, and then he dove into the tub with me, head first, and splashed water everywhere.

Well, lets just say that he was diving for pearls.

He found one, too.

A little time went by, Boromir came up for air, and I was a perfect lady, I kissed him before I shoved his head back under the water, again.

Faramir started pounding on the door.

"Wait, Faramir! Just gi'me another minute, me old son! Almost…almost…"

I gave Boromir's hair a good yank, and didn't me hairy toes curl up, and I shouted something else in Khudzul.

Boromir pulled his head out from under the water, took a deep breath, and grinned at me, before he grabbed a towel.

"How is it you managed not to drown?" I asked.

"Practise. Will you marry me, now?"

"Faith, after that performance? Bring in the priest! I do, and till death do us part! Now bring what you've got there over to me. I must do my part for peace."

"What did you yell, just now?"

"Nothing."

"For nothing, you shouted it very loudly. Another saying Dwarf women have amongst themselves?"

"No. I won't tell you, it was filthy."

Faramir banged on the door again.

"Far be it for me to interrupt your fine and chivalrous romance, but can you not hurry it up, some?"

"Use the chamber pot, brother!" Boromir said.

He pulled the front of his breeches down, but this time, he did not turn away.

"Tell me."

I sat up a bit and he moved closer to the edge of the bathtub.

"I said that you're not a devil with a silver tongue, rather yours is made of gold."

'What about you, Rana? Have you got a silver tongue?"

"Worth your weight in solid mithril. And I stand corrected. I could use two hands."

Later, I apologized to Faramir.

He laughed and said it was alright.

I promised I wouldn't tell his father about his not using the servant's loo.

He told me he'd only been using the servant's loo, because I was obliged to.

They are good lads, both of them, Boromir and Faramir, as good as gold, and I have often wondered if there was some fine and honorable man, perhaps a Ranger of Ithelien, who had to sit by, quietly, and watch an evil old sinner raise his two fine sons.

* * *

"Boromir, you seem far too troubled for a man who has won the love of the woman he pines for."

"It's not so simple as that, brother. I have won a moment of lust, born from a night of drunkenness. We have ended the war between us in a truce and I have won the right to make amends. First I must win Rana's trust and her friendship. Then, perhaps she will come to love me."

Faramir laughed.

"Who are you, sir, that wears my brother's clothes and looks so like him?"

Boromir laughed, too.

"Why do you think I am troubled? That, and I stand in the shadow of Mithrandir's staff, and the hammer of Thror the Mighty, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain."

Faramir smiled.

"You are the man for the task moreso than I. Even though I think that Gandalf intended the match to be between Rana and I."

"You are his pupil. You know him well. I always thought him a man as kind as he was stern. What possessed him, to do such a thing to her? A wizard older than all three ages ought to know that a woman isn't like a horse or a dog or a piece of land. You can't just give or trade or sell her to another man and consider the matter closed!"

"Perhaps he is also as wise as he is foolish. He said to me, Faramir, the love of an old man's old age is his most cherished of all. Rana is the cheer in my gloom, my light in the darkness that, daily, grows ever stronger. She is the hope I hold for all Middle Earth. Take good care of my little Hobbit girl. And there were tears in his eyes, Boromir. Gandalf is not of this land. He knows his time here grows short. Either he cannot take Ranagel with him to the Undying lands, or he knows that this is her world and she would not go with him. He wants only to know that when he is gone, that she will be protected and loved."

"You can't will a woman to another man upon your death, or your passing to the Undying Lands, either."

"That will come to him. And he will return. And Rana will go with him, Boromir. She is his Apprentice."

"I know that. But I also know that she will return. To me. And Gandalf, he has no reason for tears. Rana has a kind heart. She is angry with him, but she will forgive him."

Then, something Boromir hadn't thought of occurred to him.

"Father Odin, I am a stupid man! Am I stepping on your toes, Faramir? If Rana is yours, then I will leave you both alone, and you have my apologies."

Faramir laughed.

"Mine? My faith, brother, from the moment Rana saw you, you have been the only man in Gondor she has seen. You and your warrior's courtship of axes and fistfights and oaths and curses. Gandalf may have hoped that meeting me, his protégé, would elevate her taste in men, but the first time she saw you drunk, guzzling ale with one hand and pissing into the fire with the other, she thought: there he is! That's the one I want! He reminds me of a very large Dwarf!"

Both brothers laughed.

"That is the only time Father is cross with me."

"When you act like an oaf?"

"He always says, 'Boromir! Mind your manners? You will be Steward, someday and I expect you to marry well! What woman will want to be the wife of a farting oaf, a drunken, belching boor, such as that?"

"Now we know the answer."

"An Elvin witch, of great power?"

"No. A little Hobbit, or perhaps, she is more a beardless Dwarf."

Boromir thought about that.

"Honestly, my brother, of the other races, I have always trusted Dwarves more than Elves. They fight well, they drink well, they know the value of a hard day's work, and they are not so bloody full of themselves. Did Rana really say I reminded her of one of them?"

"She did. But she meant it as the highest of complements."

"Then I will take it, as such."

* * *

Boromir came and went through that secret door, and so did I, on many nights hence, but not for the reasons you expect.

No matter how much I want to lie with a man, it takes more than just the promise that we will not be strangers for me to choose to do so.

And I do not have a selective memory, what I told you about, in the bathtub?

Doesn't count.

I came to know Boromir as well as I knew Faramir, and, as of that time, no better, I came to realize that Faramir was not the better man, but that both were fine men, just in different ways.

Boromir was not an easy man to get to know, though.

I felt as though I knew Faramir from the first day we met and it wasn't just because we had Gandalf in common.

He's just not a very guarded or secretive man, unlike Boromir, who is more like his father, in that respect.

Denathor is a maze of secrets; he shows every man a different face that is composed of a different menagerie of those secrets; you might as well try to get to know the wind as to try and find the true Denathor.

Boromir is not quite so mysterious, but he is another man beneath his skin, from the one he seems to be.

I cannot say that I really came to know him at all, until I met that other man, quite by chance, one evening, in which I beat him playing chess.

I always beat Boromir playing chess, and it bothered him, because he is a master strategist, and because rarely could even his father beat him at the game.

"If it is not magic, Rana, why is it my own father and brother, cannot best me at chess, but you beat me, every time?"

"Because I know how you think, Boromir. That's not magic. I'm just…observant. The world is not kind to little things. When you are small, you must be clever, more clever than all of the large creatures around you, if you want to survive. You cannot best them in size and strength, so you have to be able to out-think them."

"Then I am sorry for you, if you know the way my mind works. I wish that we had remained strangers."

I had no idea what he meant by that, but I thought that if I was quiet and continued to listen, he would tell me.

"Do you want to be the Taurilbereth, Rana?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Boromir laughed, but without mirth.

"Then you understand how I think, because you think the same way. Gondor is a kingdom without a king. But he exists. Somewhere, in Middle Earth, the King… is. And we, the line of his stewards, we live in both hope and dread of him. Hope, because the coming of the King heralds an end to evil days. But fear, because the coming of the king puts an end to who we are. And to what we have. My father does not consider himself to be a steward. He is a king in all but name. And he has put his hopes, all his hopes, for himself, for Gondor, for the race of men, in me. He always reminds me of how strong the blood of Numenor is in me. As if I was the heir of Isuldur, himself. But I am not. It is not enough that I am Boromir, Captain-General of Gondor, that I am a soldier and a strategist and a warrior, that I could lead the armies of men to victory over the Enemy. In my father's eyes, the Steward of Gondor, Pride of the West is the Great Man of all Middle-Earth. I will be that man, whether I want to, or not. But how can I be him, when I am not the king? Whom I, more than all men, hope for greatly, but fear most terribly."

Boromir looked back down at the chessboard as soon as he finished speaking.

I wasn't sure what to say next.

But one thing was for sure.

We were no longer strangers; indeed.

I now knew Boromir better than anyone.

"Well, as long as we're having true confessions, I've been Gandalf's apprentice for nearly a decade, and I'm stiil a little scared. Damn it all, sometimes I'm bleedin' terrified! Of myself. Or rather, of the Power that lies in me. I mean, I'm just Randisbereth Took, a Hobbit raised by Dwarves. I'd much rather be safe at home in the Shire with a good book, in the Hobbit Hole where I grew up, or sitting in front of the Great Hearth, in the Great Hall of Erabor, telling exaggerated war stories with my kin, or sitting with my grandmother and Thror's mother, doing some sewing. Mind you, I don't mind the wandering bit; it's the wizard part I don't like, and just thinking that I am, or could be, or will someday become the Taurilbereth? It's mind-boggling. Can't I just go on reading books and singing songs and making journeys and killing orcs and have a smoke and a few drinks, now and then? Half the reason I'm so angry at Gandalf is I just don't feel safe, knowing I'll be on my own so long. What if something happens, what if I do some terrible magical thing? And I don't even talk to anyone about my visions. Look where it all got my mother. Exiled. Then she went and fell in love with my father, and that killed her. At least you have the great hope. All I have is the fear."

Then I was looking at the chessboard, too.

We both were, for a long time.

"I will say nothing of these words, Rana. To anyone." Boromir finally said.

"Neither will I."

"Rana?"

"What?"

"I think you should have great hope for yourself. After all I'd rather you be the Taurilbereth, than some haughty, vain, shallow Elf woman. A woman of that kind is very easily corrupted. But you are a sensible woman, brave and loyal and strong, but with a kind heart. I don't believe you could be corrupted. And you need not fear that your birthright will destroy your life. Faramir has told me of his visions since we were children. I have even had a few of my own. I understand that they can be mysterious, and that not all of them come to pass. You may share with me, even the most terrifying of your visions. I will not be afraid. And I promise you, that my love for you will not spell your end. I do not wish to speak ill of your father, but, if you and I had a child, I would never leave either of you behind. I would stand with you, against any foe, and protect your lives to the last drop of my blood. And if I was called to a distant war, in a distant land, and there was no avoiding it, I would take you with me, because you are as much a warrior as I. And our child could have a far worse fate than to grow up amid valiant men doing valiant deeds. And if the war was to be too terrible, we would leave our child safe beneath the mountains with your kin, where the ravages of the wars of Men and Elves are scarcely felt. And when I promised them that Father and Mother would return alive and well, not every orc in Mordor could make me break my oath."

I loved my father, and I still love him, but all my life I have thought that is what he should have done.

"I think your father's hope for you is justified, Boromir. You are the Great Man of Middle-Earth, and every race knows it to be so. And even if the King should return, in your time, he will need a Captain-General for his armies, a good right hand he can rely on. Who else would he turn to but the only Man who is his equal, and that is Boromir."

"The King would also need a wise councilor. That would be the job for Faramir. "

"Maybe you and I, we should try to hope more than we fear." I suggested

"Gandalf said that you gave him hope. I can see why. Even when you are melancholy, you remain an optimist. I shall try to become an optimist. And I will start, now. Set up the chessboard again. This time, I will think like someone else. And we'll see if you can beat me."

* * *

It was a good idea that Boromir had, and it worked, too.

Sometimes.

I was not as melancholy as I had been, but even as I warmed to Boromir, the Grey Pilgrim was on my mind.

Shadows still hung over me and anger and bitterness would not leave my heart.

And Boromir took that personally.

He took it personally that I was in his company, the object of his love, and in his kingdom, for make no mistake, Gondor was HIS kingdom, and Minas Tirith was HIS city, and that I dared, even so to be miserable.

How could I be miserable in one of the most beautiful places in Middle Earth, with him, the one and only Boromir of Gondor?

Oh no, he wasn't having any of it.

Boromir declared war on my misery, and he would not count himself victorious until he had driven the shadows from my soul and the anger and bitterness from my heart.

And Boromir of Gondor was not a man to accept defeat.

I must say, though, Minas Tirith, the White City was indeed beautiful.

The city of the kings of old was a marvel of towers and spires, of marble and stone, a great work of great men that humbled a poor Hobbit like me to stand so small within it.

Truth to be told, Gondor was beautiful, as beautiful as Mordor was terrible.

It was a vast realm, perhaps as large as two Arnors put together.

Now, with summer just ripening into fall, and the trees still green, though the landscape was as foreign to me as the moon, I could see it's beauty.

From the White Tower, if you looked to the East, you could see the expanse of the Pellinor Fields stretching below, into the vast Gondorian steppes of Ithelien, green and dotted with verdant farms and small villages, and patches of woods, stretching as far as the eye could see, even unto the wastes of Mordor.

To the North were the White Mountains, north of which was Rohan.

The mountains reached into the vault of the sky, capped with snow, even after these many lazy days of impressive heat.

To the south, the flowering Vales of Loassernach, bordered by the great river Anduin, and the patchwork of many towns and cities and villages where most of the men of Gondor dwelled.

To the West, far to the West, across the sea were the Undying Lands.

A little less far to the West and more to the North was home.

I would stand in the White Tower, which had windows which were open on all sides, and look out over vast and mighty Gondor, the Pride of the West.

For hours.

Alone.

Until Boromir discovered where I spent so much of my time.

"You're not happy in Minas Tirith, Wanderer. I can tell. So you come to the top of the White Tower, and feast your eyes upon all the lands for you to go a-wandering in."

"I wouldn't know where to start."

"I think you would love the White Mountains, coming as you do from the Lonely Mountain. Dwarves lived there, once, in another Age. Then again, the land beyond, Calenardhon, is all green and rolling hills. That might remind you of your Shire and your Buckland. Before those lands, though, on our border with Rohan is the Firian Wood and the Druadan Forest. You would like them best. But, to see something that is Gondor's own, you must look to the steppes. How they seem to stretch out, forever. A dot of trees here, a farm, a village there. Like islands in vast ocean of green. You have not known Gondor until you have ridden across the steppes. They are beautiful in fall, when all the colors change."

I sighed, in spite of myself, to hear him talk of it.

"You know your land as if she were your woman."

"Gondor is not my woman. She is my mother. And it is my task to protect Mother Gondor from all those who wish to despoil her. For my sake, for the sake of all my people, and for the sake of all the race of men."

"Your Mother Gondor is a beautiful woman. And Minas Tirith is a beautiful city. I truly feel like a little Hobbit from the backwater of nowhere, standing in the midst of it. But Wanderer is my name, and my nature. I have been in this one place too long."

"Then you and I should go on a journey. Before Winter comes. There's no reason to be vigilant in Gondor in Winter. General January and General February will crush any fool stupid enough to battle them."

"I hear that your winters are very long. And very cold."

And who will keep a wee Hobbit warm, during a long, cold, Gondorian winter?

Dark Gondorian ale, most likely.

"I'm sure you have better things to do."

"Better things than to show the Green Wizard the lands under her protection? Better things than to scour the countryside for Orcs and marauders with Thrima, Warhammer of the North, Scourge of the Goblins, who can throw an axe further than even I can? Unlike my father, I trust my brother with the keys to this kingdom. And I don't want to face Gandalf's wrath if we let his Witch of the Wood and the Wild wither away to nothing, for want of some woods and wilds to wander in."

The very idea of being on the tramp, having grass beneath my feet, riding my horse across the steppes, traveling and going and seeing breathed new life into my very soul.

"When can we go?" I asked.

"When do you want to?" he replied.

"As soon as I can get my travelling pack arranged."

The next day, Boromir and I left for the White Mountains.

* * *

It was good to be in the open, at last, and to have my face in the wind, again.

I got our provisions ready that night, and on the next day, Boromir and I started our journey together.

Wanderer by name and by nature, I can give him no higher complement than to say he was a fine traveler.

Boromir seemed to enjoy a respite from politics and city life as much as I.

We were Men of Action, not politicians.

Well, you get my meaning.

One night, when we were about halfway through our journey, we found what looked like a good enough place to stop alongside the road, make camp, and eat, at our leisure.

After all, we were in no rush.

I got to cooking immediately, and fried up the last batch of bacon meat pies I had made before we left

Bacon pies with cheddar cheese were an old Took recipe.

Once cooked, they travelled very well, and made a nice snack, or second breakfast.

Meanwhile, I think I went up a thousandfold in Boromir's estimation, when he began to taste my cooking.

Mind you, I had a place in my pack where I kept my travel foods, because as we Hobbits say, you may walk on your feet, but you travel on your stomach.

When Boromir first saw it, he asked me where all this food came from, with his eyes as wide as saucers.

"I made it, of course. The things at the top are what will spoil. On the bottom is all the stuff that will last a year. The last things you want to run out of on a trip are food, shoe leather, and good company. And no one's good company with holes in the bellies or their boots. Aren't you going to tell me I brought too much food?" I asked.

And Boromir gave me an excellent answer.

"Rana, I am six feet three inches tall, and almost as wide from shoulder to shoulder. There is no such thing as too much food."

On that day we camped and ate the last of our bacon pies, Boromir brought down a couple of coneys, and I went looking for some greens and mushrooms and found both, and the odd potato.

By the time he had seen to the tent, I had seen to the fire, and I had my trusty pot and skillet at the ready.

"Fingers out of the pot, you. There are plates in the saddlebag. They're in my pack. Forks, too."

We had barely any conversation during supper, because much of the time was taken up by Boromir and I burning through the meal like a house on fire.

Then, I nipped off to a nearby stream, and had everything washed up and packed while he was still patting his stomach and contemplating another burp or two.

"Are you really going to marry a dwarf, Ranagel? Because if you can throw an axe and make a meal like that out of nothing, you'd be wasting your life. Not on your Thror. But on marriage."

I got out my pipeweed and my pipe.

Boromir had neither, so we passed it back and forth, lazing on the ground, bellies full.

"Don't you believe a word of what you hear about Dwarf men. It's all lies. But I agree that marriage is a waste of one's life. Me father can say what he likes, I'm not going to marry anybody. I'm not the marrying kind. Neither is Thror, for that matter. "

"So you are a wandering witch, with a swain in every port?"

"Not quite. But there are a few very close friends of mine, you know."

"I do know. I know you well. I even know something of Halflings and I can see their nature in you."

"We prefer to be called Hobbits." I sniffed

"You prefer that we big people see you as simple, pleasant, merry, home-loving creatures, which you are. But you also prefer that we do not see your cleverness, the way you may move among us without being seen, your knack for quietly, in your self-effacing way, coming to see and hear and observe all without being noticed."

"That's true. You're certainly not the big, dumb oaf I took you for when I met you, Boromir."

"Of course I'm not. You gave me no credit when first we met because you have long heard, from Rangers, Hobbits, Elves and Dwarves alike that titled warmongers like me are brutal and stupid, that we ignore what we see and take what we want. I'm sure you though that as soon as we were out of sight of civilization, as out of sight, I would pull you from your horse and drag you into the bushes. What I don't know is if you are disappointed I haven't."

I laughed.

"I was hoping you'd get around to it. But all you've done, so far, my would- be swain, when we have made camp is eat my food, smoke my pipeweed, sleep, and snore."

Boromir blew a perfect smoke ring, making me think he was a pipeweed smoker, after all.

Tomorrow night, I would ask him for his pipeweed, as he was so casually smoking mine.

"I was not sure if we were still strangers. Because you would not lie with a stranger."

"Don't use me own words against me! Remember when I told you that when I wanted it, I would take it? I just might!"

Boromir laughed.

"That is no threat coming from a woman to a man. Maybe it is to a very old man. Such as your Master, the Grey Pilgrim. Mind, I do not mean to denigrate the old wizard's love. I am sure he loves you, with all his heart and his soul. But you are young, and your blood is hot, and you need a man to love you not with his heart and his soul, only, but with his hands and his lips. And the fire of his loins."

I had the feeling that Denethor's heir would come to that.

I'd had my hand in the midst of the fire of his loins, and by Loki's red beard they were fine and hot.

"Firey as Loki's red beard, am I? With you about, it's no wonder."

"Durin's beard, did I say that aloud?'

"You did!"

"Well, so what if I did, then? But here you are again, O Captain, my Captain, talking about love. We've burnt past fucking, and left lust, well, in the dust, and gone straight on to love. Am I meant to believe that you love me?"

"Do your other men not love you, Rana?"

I tried to think of the best way to explain to my gallant suitor just what was between me, and my swains in every port.

I decided to show him the letters I had written, with the intent to post them at the nearest inn, during our travels.

"I have here, some letters which I intend to post, when we reach an inn that offers the service. These I will set aside, for they go to my family, and wouldn't make any difference to you. This heavy package, which contains a Gondorian dagger and a long letter goes back with them, as well. It is a letter to Thror The Younger, the youngest son of the sister of Thorin Oakenshield. By the time he gets it, I shall have been gone long enough for him to be expecting a letter from me, for we write each other , regularly. I was raised and schooled with Thror, because he and I are age-mates, and because his mother is the best friend of my adopted grandmother. Thror is my closest and dearest friend and companion. This is his birthday present, and I hope he gets it in time. Thror is a blacksmith, by trade, black-haired, and black-bearded, but he enjoys some noble Dwraven hobbies. Travel, commerce and the killing of orcs. He's a proud, stubborn man with as much mischief in him as Loki can put in a dwarf, and it is that which binds us together. Our love or travel, and adventure and merry mischief. And of killing orcs. Thror is one or three inches taller than I am, and his shoulders are as wide as yours, with arms and legs like the trunks of trees. I have seen him carry his anvil under his arm like it was a feather pillow, and may lightening strike me if I'm lying. I saw him punch a horse once and knock it cold, lift the rider, a man your size, over his head, and throw him into the Brandywine River. If you came upon him in the wood, stripped to his waist, you might mistake him for a bear and not a man. Thror has asked Gimli for my hand in marriage, and it is this match that my foster father holds out the most hope for. Even though I am fairly sure that in the next hundred years or so, it will not come to pass."

"You may swear on what you like, but I do not believe even a man my size could knock a horse cold."

"Then I will not tell you about the time that Thror fought a bear and won, because you would not believe me. Now, this rather large envelope will take even more time to arrive at the Prancing Pony, in Bree. And all Rangers come, eventually to Bree. That is where I met Strider, and I renewed his acquaintance in Rivendell. You have me right, Boromir, I have ridden with the Rangers of the North, in Gandalf's stead at times, when their task at hand needs a little magic. I have been laying siege to the citadel of Strider's virtue since I was 17 years old, and it is yet to fall. But my hope springs eternal. None the less, I am proud to call him my Chieftain and my friend, so I do not let much time go by without writing him."

"By the shards of Narsil, Rana, does no may pay you court who has a gentle nature?"

"Strider's nature is gentler than you might think. And Gandalf has a gentle nature, except, of course, when he is fierce. I do not know where he wanders, but I know he always stops to visit Radagast the Brown, in Mirkwood Forest. So, I will send this envelope to Radagast the Brown. It contains my report of my doings these past few months, but also a long letter, much of which was written late at night, after I had too much dark Gondorian ale. I am surprised it hasn't burnt through the envelope, so much fire and venom does it contain. After he reads this, Gandalf will not have to wonder how he has left me feeling. Indeed, I hope he thinks I mean never to speak to him again. I'll write him again, in a month or three, less angrily, but let him stew in his own juices for awhile, the way I have."

I chuckled at the very thought of the look on Gandalf's face as he read, and how he would spit and sputter to Radagast, and walk halfway to Gondor, before the thought better of it.

Boromir shook his head.

"I can't see how you must see yourself. You have travelled from one end of Middle Earth to the other with Gandalf, even before, and your mother who was a seer named you Wanderer. And you have lived among all the peoples in Middle Earth? But yet you cannot see yourself. You have no beard, Rana. And you are not three feet tall. Your mother was an Elf, and you have her beauty, but it is not a cold, hard, thin beauty. You may think I'm trying to seduce you with pretty words, but as you have only heard them from a wizard, certainly not from a dwarf, and never from a Ranger, I will be the first man to say them to you. Your eyes are warm and friendly, and sparkle with bright merriment. Your long , curly hair waves and bounces as you move, just like the curves of your bosom and your hips. I shouldn't wonder that Gandalf wishes he was not a grey-haired old man, because I'm sure he sees that the embrace of your arms would be warm, and the embrace of your legs as hot as the fires of Mount Doom."

I wasn't sure if it was a complement, for Boromir to compare the force of my lust to the fires of Sauron, but he meant it to be.

He had put my pipe down on a rock, and moved quite close to me.

I could feel his hot breath on my neck, and see the molten lust in his eyes as he finished what had started to be a flowery complement in a strangled growl.

"You may take your sword and cut off my head for saying so, but I will risk my head for the pleasure of burning in the fires of your loins, only to be drowned in the fountain of your love."

I had, all my life wished that I might have a man such as Boromir, tall and burly and strong, like a Lion in Winter, and I would have given him all he desired.

But again, in that moment, I thought of Gandalf, and my passion was in ashes.

I sat up like a shot.

"May the gods send you to the hottest boiling kettle in Hell, Gandalf the Grey! Will I never be able to think of lying with another man without Gandalf rising into my mind and throwing a bucket of cold water over the very thought?"

Boromir sat up, too.

"Maybe he has enchanted you." He suggested.

"He has. But not in the way you think. Boromir, you misjudge the love of wizards. Or at least of Gandalf. He did not love only with only his heart and his mind. And he had two or three or four thousand years of practice to back his heart and mind up with, as well! There is no magic in it. But you do not spend eight years of your life with a fellow who is all things to you in all places in all times and then just forget him as if he was a stranger? Because his nature is the gentlest, and yet at the same time, the fiercest of any man I have ever met, and it is Gandalf who has left his mark on me. I find it is indelible, now, and that nothing can relieve the pain, the anger and the bitterness I feel, at having been so casually cast out by him."

I realized then, that my grief had poisoned the time I had spent in Gondor, and likewise poisoned my interactions with all that I met.

"I am sorry if I have blown hot and cold with you, Boromir. Or if I've been mean and angry. It's not my way. But grief hangs over me as if it were my shroud, and I find it easier to be angry than to be sad. And Gandalf haunts me. Whenever I reach my arms to you, I see him. And I despair."

I felt tears coming to my eyes, and then spilling down my face.

I had no wish to cry in front of the great Boromir of Gondor, and tried to get up and leave, but he put his arms around me, and held me close against his chest, and let me cry for awhile.

He spoke again, when we had parted.

"Then it is worse."

"What is worse?"

"Worse because one wizard knows how to break another's enchantments. But how can a woman, a young woman, learn to break the hold a man has over her who has been all things to her, in all places, since she left her father's house?"

"That is what I think he wants me to do. But I cannot! Gandalf said I had to go forth, and be my own Wizard and my own woman, and find the simple love a man has for a woman and a woman has for a man."

"Then this tale has nothing in it but tragedy. Because it ends where an old man, facing his greatest task must choose between his duty, and the last of love he will find in his life. And what about you, Rana? Men are men, truly, whether they are elves, dwarves, men or even wizards, because we all hide the worst of our sins behind love. I know Gandalf is wise, but it was selfish of him to accept the gift you offered when he knew that he would soon have to return it. And it seems cruel of him, not to leave you in the hands of your kin, among dwarves or Hobbits, or even the Elves, but then to abandon you in a far-flung foreign land, where you have no friends and no kin."

"But this is where I am needed, says he."

"By Odin's eye, you are a woman! You are needed in your Shire by your kin, and your fellow traveler, Thror, who fights bears, to have a long and happy life, and to give your fathers many grandchildren! You are needed in the Forests of the North, by the Rangers who swear by the magic of Ranagel the Green. You are needed by the dwarves in Erabor, you should sing and play, and tell stories in the lands of your home, in the halls of your kin! You are not needed here, for my eyes and my brother's are vigilant enough against Mordor, even if my father's are blinded!"

Boromir got up, and began to pace.

"Why are you needed in Gondor, whose Steward makes sport of you, and whose heir follows you with lust in his heart? But it is more, more than only just lust. I wish you would believe that I love you, though I do not know the reason or rhyme of it. Only that the sight of you struck me, as a bolt from the hammer of Thor. And to have come to know you better has made me love you all the more. As I have never loved any of the many women I have had. I will not ask you to stay for my sake, though, And if it were in my power I would order you to leave , and never come back, never to think on me or my country again. Because of my love of you, that the last thing I would do is thrust another dagger into your heart! Go back to your Master, for though you do not seem to know what the word means, it is him that you love. Him that you will always love. Not me."

I got up from where we sat.

"If you are right and this is love, then I was right to want no part of it! My pride is destroyed, my heart is shattered, and I am poisoned by my own bitterness and rage! I cannot see the Shire, or the Hall of the Mountain King, or the Last Homely House. In times like this, when lust deserts me, and rage leaves my heart, I can see only death. The grave calls me, and with every day, my desire to go and meet it becomes stronger. If you had not spent so much time with me, there, I think that before now, I would have thrown myself from the White Tower."

I had not admitted that aloud to myself, even, and I was surprised I revealed it to Boromir.

He looked shocked.

"You are thinking of suicide?"

"I am thinking of death. I don't care how I die, so long as I am dead. And I hope there is no life after this one. I feel old, and I feel tired, and broken as I am, I no longer want to live."

I cried again, this time, loudly, and with great anguish.

Once more, Boromir held me against his chest.

He spoke next in a tone of great desperation.

Madness even.

"Then I fought my war against the wrong enemy! For it is not you who are my foe, but the shadows and despair that threaten to take you from me! Against them, Rana, I declare a battle to the death! Oh no, you will not die! You will not even think of death! I will drive these thoughts from your mind, and fill your small round belly with a raging fire of lust that only I can put out! I am wilder and stronger than your bear of a Dwarf, and I am greater and bloodier and more fierce a warrior than he."

He pressed me down upon the grass, and pulled at the straps on my jerkin, and the lacings at the neck of my tunic.

"…I love you more than does an old man who thinks more of great deeds than his own small woman…."

Boromir sat upon his elbows, cursing like the soldier he was, fumbling to take off his baldric, to unclasp his cloak.

"…I can make you forget them all…and I will…"

I think that he was struggling, for finer words to say, and I lay on the grass, on my back, waiting for them.

And I am sorry for those of you caught up in this breathless moment of romance, because, at last, he smiled and then laughed.

And so did I, my faith, I could not help it.

"…and I would show you if I wasn't wearing so many damned clothes!"

"What, here by the road? We had better make sure the horses are tied and go to the tent. Because I think it would attract some little attention from travelers, the great heir to the stewardship, with his surcoat and tunic half off and hanging open, his shirt pulled up under his chin and his pants lagging halfway down his arse, rutting some woman dressed like a Ranger, on the side of the road. With his boots still on and all! Your father would kill us both!"

We both laughed again.

And then?

Illumination!

"No! Wait! I have a feeling about this merry little wood! Come with me! If I am to escape this spell that Gandalf all unwittingly put on me, I know a place where I will be safe from it!"

I grabbed Boromir's hand, and led him into the wood.

"Will I be safe? Where is there more folly than to follow an Elf into the wood?"

"You son of an orc's bitch warg, d'yer want to live forever? C'mon, then!"

There are very few men whom that would have encouraged, but Boromir is among them.

We came, as I knew we would, to a clearing, and I began to remove my clothes, and hang them in the lowest branches of the tree.

The tree closet too the Faery Ring, of course.

"There it is! My people have made these Rings, and inside them, I am safe from all magic and all harm. A wizard can sometimes make a suggestion in the mind of another, an enchantment, of sorts, without even knowing he has. Here, I will be protected from both. Make your war here, Boromir. Well? What are you waiting for? Or do I disappoint you naked as I didn't, dressed?"

"You may be protected from enchantments in your magic ring, but what about me? You would have me lie with you, the Green Wizard, who just may be the Taurilbereth, naked as a needle and lush as Springtime, herself, in a Faery Ring? I would find myself enchanted from now until the end of time! Faith, witch, I would be ensnared in your fringe until the end of days! D'you think I'm mad?" Boromir exclaimed.

"I was hoping you would be."

"Then we are no longer strangers, for you know me too well!"

As quickly as he could, Boromir got out of his elaborate outfit, and hung his clothes in higher branches than mine.

The hair on his chest and his arms and his legs as long and strong as the trunks of tall oaks was the same deep red-gold as his hair and beard.

And the weapons he had divested himself of were like toys compared to the one he kept under his clothes.

Of all my men, Boromir was the roughest and the most handsome in his nakedness.

As if he was meant to be thus, naked in this small wood, with a small Wood Elf.

"Woman, I would have you in a Faery Ring, or on the side of the road, or on top of the Beacon of Amon Din, even if it was burning, so long as I will have you, by all the gods of the Valar and the Aesir!"

And didn't he beat his chest again?

By Durin the Deathless, himself, what a man Boromir was!

Although the autumn day was warm, the ground was hard, but the grass was soft, and the air tasted sweet.

And even if I do live as long as Elves do I will never forget how Boromir did break the spell I had been living under, and defeat my melancholy and despair, filling the dark spaces they left in me with a joyous madness, a raging fire of violent lust, unlike any that even a woman the likes of me had ever known.

For his hands were warm, his lips were soft, his love was hard, and never in my life had the hard love of a hard man tasted so sweet.


End file.
